Gwendolyn Knight

Lullaby: Jacob Lawrence wife, mother & child family embrace in abstract interior

1992

Please contact me for best shipping rates and speediest delivery. Ellen Powell Tiberino, matriarch of the Tiberino artist dynasty that includes her artist-husband Joseph and three artist-children (Raphael, Gabriel, and Ellen), often looked to Black women and girls as subjects, in the contexts of motherhood, pregnancy, and childhood, as well as subjects drawn from her neighborhood communities. Her work is expressionistic and passionate with dramatic gestures and dark colorism in her figures, but it is also intimate and highly personal. At this point in her career, Tiberino had been struggling with cancer, and as a result, her palette became brighter and more colorful than her former dark palette. "Three Sisters" includes Ellen Powell Tiberino’s self-portrait in the front of the composition, nursing an infant. Tiberino’s two sisters, Joyce and Anne, sit behind her. Tiberino likely paints from memory or imagination here, since her four children were well beyond nursing age when she created this painting. "Three Sisters" is likely among the last large-scale canvases Tiberino completed, opting to work on a smaller scale and while seated as her illness progressed. Tiberino ultimately lost her battle in 1992. "Three Sisters" comes from a private Main Line, PA collection, acquired directly from the artist immediately upon its completion. Framed in original wood strip frame. It is in excellent condition. Tiberino graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1959, where she was awarded a prestigious Cresson scholarship to study in Europe. After returning to the US, she lived and worked in New York until she married fellow artist (Joseph) and returned to her hometown of Philadelphia where she continued to create oil paintings, oil pastels drawings, sculptures, murals, and mosaics. In Philadelphia, she was part of social and professional circles that included Moe Brooker, Barbara Bullock, Walter Edmonds, Charles Pridgen, Leroy Johnson, John Simpson, James Dupree...

Jay Walker's "Inner Space" series analyzes a single motif built from repeating parallel lines that is commonly found in his work. In this series of 12 paintings on paper, Walker expl...

Silkscreen in eleven colors on vélin paper. Paper Size: 12.81 x 9.375 inches. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Notes: From the album, Hiroshima, 1983. Published by Th...

Ann Graves Tanksley, Untitled (Mother and Child), mixed media on Japan paper, c. 1960s. Signed 'A. Tanksley' in gold in the image, lower right. Linoleum cut in black ink on Japanese paper, with blue and gold brushed ink; cloth batik collage, and metallic gold star laid onto black construction paper. Created as a seasonal greeting. Inscribed on the inside panel is 'Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Love, John & Ann.' Archivally matted to museum standards. Unique. Image size 7 3/8 x 4 7/16 inches (187 x 113 mm); front panel size 8 11/16 x 5 3/4 inches (221 x 146 mm). ABOUT THE ARTIST “Her work reflects the influence of her travels, the residential colors, the simple work habits, the loneliness, and the love and devotion to one’s spiritual beliefs. There is a oneness of artist and concept. Her love of life, despite social barriers and frustrations, is promoted in her work for audiences to witness and accept... Her paintings evoke a spiritual awakening. One is drawn to the intensity of color that prevails and identifies the moods of feasts and celebrations. ...Life is full of anticipation and dedication, of acceptance and hope, of faith and survival. These are all present in the works of Ann Tanksley.” —Robert Henke, The Art of Black American Women: Works of Twenty-Four Artists of the Century, McFarland & Company, Inc., 1993. Ann Graves was born in 1934 and raised in the Homewood community in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Drawn to art at an early age, Tanksley graduated from Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in 1956 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. Following graduation from college, she married fellow Homewood native John Tanksley, and the couple moved to Brooklyn, New York. He worked as a photo retoucher in the advertising industry. Tanksley devoted herself to raising her daughters while working as an art instructor before fully pursuing her artistic pursuits. She was an art instructor at Queens Youth Center for the Arts from 1959-62, the Arts Center of Northern New Jersey in 1963, and a substitute art instructor at Malvern Public Schools in 1971. She also served as an adjunct art instructor at Suffolk County Community College from 1973-1975. Tanksley continued her art education with studies at the Arts League of New York, The New School, the Paulette Singer Workshop in Great Neck, and the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, where she learned monotype printmaking. In addition to Blackburn and Singer, Tanksley studied with several renowned artists throughout her career, including Norman Lewis (artist), Balcomb Greene, and Samuel Rosenberg (artist). Tanksley was one of the first members of Where We At: Black Women Artists, Inc., a New York-based women’s art collective founded by artists Kay...