The Highwaymen, Legends of the Road
The new one hour feature presentation is a follow up to filmaker Jack Hambrick 's critically acclaimed 2002 PBS Highwaymen documentary, "The Highwaymen, Florida's Outsider Artists".
Legends of the Road continues the Highwaymen story, focusing on the three artists that started the art phenomenon, A.E. Backus, Alfred Hair and Harold Newton.
The program features never before released interviews with legendary artist A.E. Backus as well as exclusive images of the artitists and the last on camera interviews with painters Livingston Roberts and Hezakiah Baker.
The Highwaymen is the story of a group of young, untrained black landscape painters that emerged from a small central Florida town in the late 1950s and 1960's. Segregation and racist attitudes of the time prevented them from working with traditional art galleries. Instead, they traveled throughout the state selling their paintings out of the trunks of their cars. They painted on wallboard and made their own frames. The going rate was around $35 a painting.
The Highwaymen had no pretensions about their art. They saw themselves as craftsmen, painting pictures strictly to earn a living. The artists used paintbrushes and palette knives to escape the drudgery of picking vegetables or oranges in Florida's citrus groves. Highwaymen leader artist Alfred Hair led the group to paint with an assembly line approach. The goal was to mass produce colorful decorative art for the sole purpose of making money and a lot of it.
In 1995 the Highwaymen became recognized by the art world. This fueled a frenzy of treasure collectors and art buyers in the market and on the search for Highwayman paintings. No one knows for sure, but it is estimated that their aggregate work may exceed 200,000 paintings.
Legends of the Road continues the Highwaymen story, focusing on the three artists that started the art phenomenon, A.E. Backus, Alfred Hair and Harold Newton.
The program features never before released interviews with legendary artist A.E. Backus as well as exclusive images of the artitists and the last on camera interviews with painters Livingston Roberts and Hezakiah Baker.
The Highwaymen is the story of a group of young, untrained black landscape painters that emerged from a small central Florida town in the late 1950s and 1960's. Segregation and racist attitudes of the time prevented them from working with traditional art galleries. Instead, they traveled throughout the state selling their paintings out of the trunks of their cars. They painted on wallboard and made their own frames. The going rate was around $35 a painting.
The Highwaymen had no pretensions about their art. They saw themselves as craftsmen, painting pictures strictly to earn a living. The artists used paintbrushes and palette knives to escape the drudgery of picking vegetables or oranges in Florida's citrus groves. Highwaymen leader artist Alfred Hair led the group to paint with an assembly line approach. The goal was to mass produce colorful decorative art for the sole purpose of making money and a lot of it.
In 1995 the Highwaymen became recognized by the art world. This fueled a frenzy of treasure collectors and art buyers in the market and on the search for Highwayman paintings. No one knows for sure, but it is estimated that their aggregate work may exceed 200,000 paintings.
