Landscapes in the Rearview Mirror

The light in Fort Pierce has a particular, heavy brilliance, especially late in the afternoon when the thunderstorms clear and the sun strikes the Indian River Lagoon. It is the same light that, sixty years ago, a group of self-taught African American artists captured using cheap house paint and sheets of construction board. These painters, who became known as the Highwaymen, sold their landscapes from the trunks of their cars along U.S. 1, their canvases still wet with oil. Today, in a modest gallery on Old Dixie Highway, Frank Miller stands before a painting of a flaming royal poinciana tree, its scarlet blossoms rendered with thick, expressionistic brushstrokes.

Miller, a local collector who acquired his first Highwayman canvas in exchange for a used lawnmower in 1972, appreciates the raw urgency of the work. The artists painted fast, sometimes producing dozens of landscapes in a single weekend to meet the demands of motel owners and real estate agents. The paintings present a romanticized, wild Florida—a dream of untamed coastlines, solitary palms, and moody, cloud-filled skies that was already disappearing even as they painted it. To Miller, the work is not merely regional folk art; it is a preservation project carried out in vibrant greens and deep, bruised purples by men who were denied entry to traditional galleries.

Inside the air-conditioned quiet of the gallery, the paintings glow with a strange, nostalgic warmth that seems to push back against the strip malls outside. Outside on the highway, truck traffic rumbles toward the interstate, and the remaining pine forests are regularly cleared for new storage facilities and fast-food franchises. Yet, on the walls of Miller's shop, the orange sun is forever sinking into an endless, undisturbed marsh, and the solitary egrets remain frozen in mid-flight. It is an idealized peninsula that survives only in the imagination and in the thick, weathered layers of paint on these old, salvaged boards.