The Highwaymen, a group of self taught mostly black artists who were centered around the east coast of Florida. They are recognized as being the beginning of an art movement now known as the "Indian River School." Their scenes are of native landscapes and their media is usually oil. The artists received help and encouragement from A. E. "Bean" Backus of Fort Pierce, but were not "trained" in a traditional setting.
This group of artists were so named the "Highwaymen " as they often drove their cars out to the side of I - 95 (which was not completed then in several of the counties at this time) and sold the paintings from the trunks of their cars. There are stories of these painters setting up a sales area in local butcher shops or simply walking down mainstreet of town offering their art to passersby. The Highwaymen were in their peak from 1950 to 1970's. I can remember looking out the window of our car as we went down to Miami as these artists. sometimes relaxing by their cars, paintings propping open the trunk. There are a few more artists recognized as belonging to this group are Harold Newton, George Buckner, and Al Black. Their art can now be found in the galleries of Florida as they finally receive the recognition they deserve.
These young men chose a positive approach to their situation. The Highwaymen are a group of young black artists who painted their way out of the despair and represion awaiting them in low paying jobs such as: citrus groves and packing houses of 1950s Florida. As their story recaptures the imagination of all thinking people and their paintings fetch ever-escalating prices, the legacy of their uncoached landscapes exerts a new influence on the popular conception of the Sunshine State. Emerging in the late 1950s, the Highwaymen created idyllic, symbolic images of Florida nature and peddled some 100,000 of them from the trunks of their cars.
They worked with inexpensive materialsto produce an astonishing number of landscapes that depict a romanticized Florida — a faraway place of wind-swept palm trees, billowing cumulus clouds, wetlands, lakes, rivers, ocean, and setting sun. With paintings still wet, they loaded their cars and traveled the state's east coast, selling the images door-to-door and store-to-store, in restaurants, offices, courthouses, and bank lobbies.The evidence of this "rush to market " is found sometimes as the impression of a frame in the oil of the painting staked above it.
These men and women are true black heros of their time. The set an example for the belabored youth of today. The value of each of these lives should be upheld as proof that the American dream can work for the black youth of today. This is a personal opinion based on the author's life experience.