Loïs Mailou Jones

Loïs Mailou Jones (born November 3, 1905, in Boston, Massachusetts; died June 9, 1998, in Washington, D.C.) was an American artist and educator whose wide-ranging practice explored African American identity, cultural heritage, landscape, portraiture, and the artistic connections among Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and the United States. Working across painting, watercolor, collage, textile design, and illustration, Jones developed a visual language that moved between Impressionism, modernism, figuration, and abstraction.  Jones studied design at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, graduating with honors in 1927, and continued her education at the Designers Art School of Boston, Howard University, Columbia University, and the Académie Julian in Paris. Her work often engaged African masks and sculpture, Haitian culture, Black history, spirituality, travel, and the natural environment, using vivid color, decorative pattern, geometric structure, and textile-informed composition to connect personal experience with broader diasporic histories. She taught design and watercolor at Howard University from 1930 until 1977, mentoring generations of Black artists.  Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Mint Museum, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Jones received the Robert Woods Bliss Prize for Landscape Painting in 1941 and a White House Award for Outstanding Achievements in the Visual Arts in 1980. She lived and worked primarily in Washington, D.C., while maintaining important creative connections to Boston, Martha’s Vineyard, Paris, Haiti, and several African countries.