Minnie Evans

Arc of the Covenant

wax crayon on paper

Minnie Evans was born in Pender County, North Carolina in 1890. For many years she worked as a gate attendant at Airlie Gardens near Wilmington. Her contact with the Gardens is seen in the bright colors and numerous floral motifs that appear in many of her paintings. Evans’s earliest paintings were executed entirely in wax crayons, as is this piece, and seem to employ almost every color.

Always a dreamer, Evans stated that the origins of her paintings were in her subconscious state of mind. Her paintings are essentially religious in inspiration and represent a world where God, man and nature are synonymous. The figures in her paintings are often ancient wise men and women, angels, and sometimes even demons. The Saint James Guide to Black Artists tells us that Evans’s paintings and drawings are “the works of a talented naïve artist and a visionary who equated God with nature, color with his divine presence, and dreams and visions with reality.”

The paintings of Minnie Evans are in the collections of many southeast regional museums, and in the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.