At their monthly meeting in May 2017, the Acquisitions Committee was excited to accept the gift of George Pearse Ennis' undated watercolor Harbor Carpenters from Barry Huffman. The gift celebrates the appointment of Jon Carfagno as the fifth Director of the Hickory Museum of Art. (more here about Ennis)

Most recently, former Board member and current Honorary Trustee Josephine Hambrick donated to HMA the lovely portrait that Paul Whitener painted of her as a young girl in 1938, and the Acquisitions Committee was delighted to accept this gift. Paul of course was the Museum's founder, and (more)

“Tearing fabrics and applying them to canvas, mixing various media in with the paint, and building surfaces over time is the foundation of my process." Hearon has lived, studied art and painted in Hickory since the 1980’s, saying “I cannot not paint.” (more)

Harvey had a special regard for tongues, as she explained in an interview towards the end of her life, "He speaks that all animals and everything in the earth has been tamed by mankind except the tongue, ... the tongue cannot be tamed. So before you use it to say things that will hurt yourself or someone else, remember that love covers a multitude of faults, and it's a fault to go around hurting others."  (more)

A February 16, 1953 article in The Hickory Daily Record on the topic of HMA’s 1952 acquisitions says of Shirley Pruden's The Aerialist that “It is an excellent work which shows superb knowledge of anatomy as applied to the human figure and is unusually brilliant in color.”  This was the first work by a woman artist that had been purchased by the Museum.  (more)

Theresa Gloster, a folk-artist from Lenoir, NC, was part of this year's HMA project of bringing the joy of art to a group of financially challenged Catawba County seniors. This HMA program was started last year with funding from the State of North Carolina and the National Endowment for the Arts, through the North Carolina Arts Council, the Unifour Foundation and United Arts Council of Catawba County. Gloster's program partner speaks of her experience working with (more)

The prolific North Carolina painter Elliott Daingerfield argued against both literalness in painting ("If reproduction of surface fact be the ultimate of the painter's mission, then is he of all men most petty and miserable.") and imitation, regarding which he held that "The answer is, in art each man must be a leader, not a follower, for no two are alike, no two souls are given the same message, and while it may amuse the critic to trace likeness, the great truth remains that true art is personal."  (more)

"Finally I decided that I’m going to paint that old church [at home] just like I remember it. And that’s what I did. When the canvas was finished I liked it. That’s what started me to painting like I paint. I paint things I remember.” 

Between April 23 and July 24, 2016, a selection of Arlee’s paintings on loan from Art Cellar Gallery and local collectors will be on display at HMA. (more)

Lillian Genth is probably best known for her female nudes with landscape backgrounds, which she painted at her summer home in the Berkshires. However, in 1928 she issued a press release that said she would never paint another nude, and she never did, moving on instead to other subjects. (more)

Maud Gatewood once said, “[Art] is like people: If you meet a person that's absolutely pleasant, they tend to be innocuous. Nothing's worse than being pleasant.” Another time she said, “I think you learn that life isn't always straightforward. I think it's in the nature of the species to be a little evasive and covered. Ambiguity might be the heart of life as well as art.” (more)

One of HMA's other Crowell paintings, The Gourd Lady), is of life-long Conover resident Margaret Sparkman. She had adopted this persona as her artist identity, in that creativity with gourds was her medium; and that landed her a spot on the Jay Leno show in 2003.

The son of a minister, Crowell has been developmentally disabled from birth. As a child,  (more)

Early on, Charlotte-born and Harlem-raised Bearden debated whether to be an artist, a musician, or a professional baseball player. As a painter, he used ideas from math and music, especially jazz, in his art, along with aspects of his many other influences. As a result, (more)

Freedom: A fable combines dainty Victorian silhouettes and the pop-up medium ... to contradict the dire situation in which [the book's] heroine finds herself.  The work at first glance appears to be a nineteenth-century children's book, but it is decidedly not. (more)

Between October 2013 and January 2014, HMA exhibited a selection of paintings by the North Carolina artist Juie Rattley III in a show called Chaos and Control. At that time, Rattley spoke about how he experiences his creativity. (more)

In the Spring of 2007, ceramic sculptor Sharif Bey's ornamental yet functional pots and and his necklaces of massive ceremonial beads were exhibited at HMA in a one-person show, amidst some mild controversy. He said of his works that "This series of work combines my interest in African, Indian, Pre-Columbian, Native American, and Modernist sculpture while still applying the rigid functional criteria I acquired as a potter.” (more)

Minnie Reinhardt was often referred to as "the Grandma Moses of Catawba County." She used a primitive style to to paint from recollections of her childhood. She said about wanting to paint that "I was just real interested in it. If you're not, you don't want to mess with it. You can't do nothing without being interested and wanting to do it more than anything else -- that's the main thing."  (more)

In 1954 Paul Whitener received eight Starkweather paintings for consideration, works that Paul Whitener happily acccepted for HMA. You can enjoy these and other of HMA's Starkweather works between October 31, 2015 and August 14, 2016 in the Paul Whitener Gallery. (more)