The Highway Art

In a quiet, air-conditioned bungalow in Fort Pierce, Liam O'Connor is surrounded by hundreds of identical representations of the Florida sunset. They are the work of the Highwaymen, a group of self-taught African-American artists who, during the Jim Crow era, painted thousands of vibrant landscape scenes on cheap Upson board and sold them from the trunks of their cars. O'Connor, seventy-four, is a retired history teacher who has spent the last two decades tracking down and cataloging these works, which were once dismissed by academic critics as commercial kitsch. His walls are covered with flame-red royal poincianas, solitary palm trees, and stormy Atlantic waves.

O'Connor’s paradox is that he is an archivist of a school of art that was celebrated precisely for its speed and lack of preservation. The Highwaymen painted fast, sometimes finishing several canvases in a single afternoon using house paint and palette knives, because they needed to sell them quickly to survive. O'Connor, by contrast, spends months verifying the provenance of a single painting, using expensive chemical tests to identify the specific house paints used by individual artists. "They painted to eat, not to be remembered," O'Connor said, examining a signature with a lighted magnifying glass. "But the speed of their work is what gives it such raw, atmospheric power."

As the light fades outside, O'Connor turns on a series of gallery lamps that illuminate the thick, expressive brushstrokes of a painting by Harold Newton. The orange sky in the painting seems to glow with its own internal heat, a vibrant contrast to the cool, quiet room. O'Connor knows that many of the original artists have passed away, and their works are now highly sought after by wealthy collectors. He is determined to build a permanent museum in Fort Pierce to keep the collection together, ensuring that this radical, roadside art form receives the academic recognition it deserves.