Art Conversation

I Sing Because I am Happy: Florida Self-Taught Artists

Join us for an engaging and interactive discussion led by a museum educator from the Tampa Museum of Art.

Joanna Robotham, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Tampa Museum of Art, will present a talk on three of Florida’s distinguished self-taught artists: Harold Newton, Purvis Young, and Ruby C. Williams. Each artist found success as painters despite the adversity they faced during the Jim Crow era. On the Space Coast, Harold Newton was regarded as one of the pillars of the Florida Highway, a collective known for their idyllic landscapes of Florida’s shorelines and rivers. Purvis Young  painted his Overtown neighborhood in Miami in his assemblage artworks. Ruby C. Williams, known locally as Miss Ruby, created vibrant fruit and vegetable signs to advertise her family’s farm in Bealsville. A woman of faith, Miss Ruby also painted imagery with uplighting hymns.

Harold Newton, Purvis Young, and Ruby C. Williams’s art are part of the Tampa Museum of Art’s permanent collection. They are featured artists in the poster exhibition Made in Florida, on view across the Hillsborough County Library system.

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