Spring Break
George Hunt's blues-inspired art on display at the UA
Amanda Wells
Issue date: 1/16/08 Section: Life & Style
Hunt continued to paint European-inspired work at UM, until his advisor encouraged him to take inspiration from things familiar to him in life, he said.
"[My advisor] said to me, 'Why don't you paint what you know?'" Hunt said. "I grew up listening to the blues, and it was all around me in Memphis, so it was just a natural kind of thing."
Hunt spent 36 years teaching art and coaching football at George Washington Carver High School in Memphis before retiring to focus on his art full-time. Since that time, he has been commissioned to create images for numerous venues, including 24 portraits for the Blues & Legends Hall of Fame Museum in 1996 and original images for the Memphis in May Beale Street Music Festival posters, which Hunt has been doing for about 15 years.
Although Hunt said all of his projects have been fun, his favorite was the task of painting 25 portraits of blues personalities for the Famous Dave's Legendary Pit Bar-B-Que restaurant in downtown Chicago. The paintings, which each measure about 40 inches by 60 inches, are prominently displayed in the three-story restaurant.
One reason Hunt particularly enjoyed this project is because it gave him the opportunity to paint the portraits of real people whose music had influenced him, he said.
"I don't do paintings of specific artists much," Hunt said, "because there are complications with copyrights when it comes to using people's likenesses." Instead, many of the people seen in Hunt's paintings are what he calls "vapors of my imagination."
"I call them 'vapors' because I combine characteristics of different people to create one person," Hunt said. "I'm a big fan of Picasso; I cut and paste and distort."
One thing that sets Hunt's work apart from Picasso and other cubist artists, however, is the subject matter. The vast majority of Hunt's paintings focus on the experiences of blacks in the South.
Aside from his blues-inspired pieces, Hunt has also created artworks based on the Civil Rights Movement. One of these paintings, created in 1997, was issued as a postage stamp in 2005 as part of the U.S. Postage Service series "To Form a More Perfect Nation."
"[My advisor] said to me, 'Why don't you paint what you know?'" Hunt said. "I grew up listening to the blues, and it was all around me in Memphis, so it was just a natural kind of thing."
Hunt spent 36 years teaching art and coaching football at George Washington Carver High School in Memphis before retiring to focus on his art full-time. Since that time, he has been commissioned to create images for numerous venues, including 24 portraits for the Blues & Legends Hall of Fame Museum in 1996 and original images for the Memphis in May Beale Street Music Festival posters, which Hunt has been doing for about 15 years.
Although Hunt said all of his projects have been fun, his favorite was the task of painting 25 portraits of blues personalities for the Famous Dave's Legendary Pit Bar-B-Que restaurant in downtown Chicago. The paintings, which each measure about 40 inches by 60 inches, are prominently displayed in the three-story restaurant.
One reason Hunt particularly enjoyed this project is because it gave him the opportunity to paint the portraits of real people whose music had influenced him, he said.
"I don't do paintings of specific artists much," Hunt said, "because there are complications with copyrights when it comes to using people's likenesses." Instead, many of the people seen in Hunt's paintings are what he calls "vapors of my imagination."
"I call them 'vapors' because I combine characteristics of different people to create one person," Hunt said. "I'm a big fan of Picasso; I cut and paste and distort."
One thing that sets Hunt's work apart from Picasso and other cubist artists, however, is the subject matter. The vast majority of Hunt's paintings focus on the experiences of blacks in the South.
Aside from his blues-inspired pieces, Hunt has also created artworks based on the Civil Rights Movement. One of these paintings, created in 1997, was issued as a postage stamp in 2005 as part of the U.S. Postage Service series "To Form a More Perfect Nation."
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