Thanks for sharing this! 😎 I’m a big fan of the artist’s work and its impact on me. This is just my 4th post of #RobertPruitt art here. 😍 One of my favorites:
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A monumental, life-size drawing shows a Black woman with medium-brown skin standing in three-quarter profile, facing our right. Her posture is upright and composed, shoulders squared, as if holding steady through a moment of quiet responsibility. She has long, thick natural hair worn loose and full, framing her face and falling past her shoulders. A folded sheet of white paper (like a program or improvised hat) rests lightly on her head. Her features are modeled with soft highlights along the cheekbone and nose and her mouth is gently closed. Her eyes are focused into the distance and her expression is thoughtful and calm. Her left hand lifts a pencil to her lips in a gesture of concentration as her right arm hangs relaxed at her side, fingers slightly curled. She wears a vivid red dress with dramatic puffed sleeves, a fitted bodice, and a draped, gathered skirt that swells with weight and movement. Cuffed wrists, small buttons, and fabric seams are carefully outlined. At the chest, a striped inset panel is dotted with small celestial emblems set close to the heart. The woman is rendered with meticulous shading in charcoal and conté, while warm coffee washes stain the paper into a soft halo behind her. Faint smudges, tape marks, and the paper’s raw edges remain visible, leaving the surrounding field mostly open so her silhouette and the saturated red garment command the space. American artist Robert Pruitt’s title identifies the usher board, a tradition of many Black American church leadership often carried by women with an ethic of care grounded in welcomeness, order, and protection. The pencil hints at her stewardship and also mirrors the artist’s own tool. Emblems on her bodice like a sunburst and planets stretch the portrait toward history and the future, as if her daily responsibility holds cosmic weight. Created for Pruitt’s CAAM exhibition “Devotion” (2018–19), the work treats its subject as an icon of ordinary greatness: poised, radiant, and fully present.
“Usher Board President” by Robert Pruitt (American) - Charcoal, conté, and coffee on paper / 2018 - California African American Museum (Los Angeles) #WomenInArt #RobertPruitt #BlackArt #AmericanArt #AfricanAmericanArt #art #artText #BlueskyArt #PortraitofaWoman #CAAM #CaliforniaAfricanAmericanMuseum
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Bodies draped with surreal ornamentation. Check out this preview of this Pruitt Exhibit by clicking the link to Picture This Post magazine's story--
#Vielmetter #LAArt #LosAngelesArtGalleries #PictureThisPostArt #RobertPruitt #BlackLivesMatter #AfricanAmericanArtists #painting
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“My hope is that the duality of the portrait gives us this sense of a person looking back at themselves, considering where they came from and where they’re going.” -- Robert Pruitt Texas native Robert Pruitt worked with tennis superstar Venus Williams to create this life-size portrait. Pruitt’s practice often bridges material and imagined realities, and through its scale and symbolism, this portrait conveys what he describes as “the super, extra-human possibility,” something Williams has demonstrated on and off the tennis court for decades. Based on a photo Williams had taken of herself in the mirror, Pruitt used that image as reference to build out his double-figured portrait of her — with Williams in one instance facing the viewer and encircled by a celestial halo of kinetic white beads (referencing her beaded hair in motion on the court as a young girl). A mirrored Williams, shown from behind and in profile, wears a red tennis outfit including a skirt made of raffia (palm tree fibers) and the Wimbledon trophy dish refashioned as a collared chestplate apropos for a warrior superhero. With seven Grand Slam titles (including five Wimbledon championships), and four Olympic gold medals, Venus Williams is one of the most accomplished and inspiring women in the history of sports. The entrepreneur and outspoken advocate on equal pay, mental health, and physical wellness professed after winning Wimbledon in 2007 that for “women and girls, there is no glass ceiling.” That was when she became the first woman tennis player to receive the same winner’s purse as her male counterpart. More recently, Williams backed campaigns to bring greater attention to wage inequality and offer resources to help young women on a grassroots level.
Venus Williams by Robert Pruitt (American) - Conté crayon, charcoal, pastel, and coffee wash on paper / 2022 - National Portrait Gallery (Washington, DC) #womeninart #art #portrait #RobertPruitt #AmericanArtist #NationalPortraitGallery #Smithsonian #VenusWilliams #mirror #womensart #portraitofawoman
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In "Flux" by American artist Robert Pruitt, an unidentified pregnant woman in bright red top and black pants sits on a boombox, her body adorned with timekeepers and talismans, as if ready and waiting to embark on a journey. The devices around her neck—including a circular clock and an African drum—relate to time, alluding to Pruitt’s fascination with time travel and a people’s ability to journey to a better place. On her right arm is an Akan Sankofa bird from Ghana, which symbolizes the need to look to the past to borrow what can help you make progress in the present and future. Pruitt lives and works in Houston, Texas. He creates artwork that examines Black identity, and, more specifically, notions of African American liberation from social, economic, and psychological constraints. He explores self-determination and the notion of an idealized Black reality—an Afrofuturistic, utopian existence. Pruitt’s influences are vast, drawing from science fiction, comic books, Black power ideology, and a romanticized notion of pre-colonial Africa. He also pays homage to pioneering visual artists like Charles White and Barkley L. Hendricks, and the cosmic philosophy of musicians such as Sun Ra and Parliament-Funkadelic. While using many different mediums, Pruitt connects all of his pieces with the allusion to the historical and contemporary examples of the African American experience.
Flux by Robert Pruitt (American) - Conté, charcoal, and gold leaf on hand-dyed paper / 2011 - Nasher Museum of Art (Durham, North Carolina) #womeninart #art #RobertPruitt #womensart #AmericanArtist #portraitofawoman #AmericanArt #NasherMuseumofArt #Pruitt #AfricanAmericanArt #AfricanAmericanArtist
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All is not as it seems in this monumental portrait by African American artist Robert Pruitt. “Woman with a Tiara” is wearing what appears to be a hinged device instead of the promised tiara. The device, a craniometer, was a tool used in the racist 19th-century pseudoscience of phrenology, which claimed to measure intelligence and personality through cranium shape. Clasped gently around the beautiful Black woman’s head, supported by her own hair rather than the hands of an oppressor, the craniometer becomes a tiara, a symbol of ornamentation, beauty, and power rather than subjugation. Her elegance, beauty, and stature is reinforced by the monumental size of the drawing: Seven feet tall. It rivals famous full-length portraits of kings and queens, leaving the woman to preside with all the grandeur of royalty while wearing a beautiful Issey Miyake dress. Pruitt has said, “Black bodies occupy a contentious space in Western minds, media, and art, and I try to complicate that space.” His charcoal portraits rework iconography from science fiction, history, and popular culture. He also works with sculpture, photography, and animation.
Woman with Tiara by Robert Pruitt (American) - Conté, charcoal, & gold leaf on coffee-stained paper / 2019 - Amon Carter Museum of American Art (Fort Worth, Texas) #womeninart #art #portrait #RobertPruitt #artwork #portraitofawoman #beauty #tiara #TheAmonCarter #AmonCarterMuseumofAmericanArt
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12 artists shine a light on The Great Migration-- READ THE PREVIEW
#ChicagoCulturalCenter #DCASE bsky.app/profile/chic... #PicturethispostArt #PicturethispostMuseums #ChicagoArt #ChicagoMuseums bsky.app/profile/rpru...
#carriemaeweems #TheGreatMigration #TorkwaseDyson #TheasterGates #RobertPruitt
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