If you've ever had a flight connect at DFW airport, you may have seen this mural, depicting my beloved Caddo Lake, created by Dallas artist Arthello Beck Jr.
Beck was the first African-American to own & operate an art gallery in Texas & launched careers for many Texas artists.
He grew up in Oak Cliff in Dallas, received no formal training beyond art class at Lincoln High School. He worked as a postal worker, a driver for Dallas MHRC, but always he was at the Dallas Public Library, looking at art.
He had a speech impediment, so art was his language.
His art depicts life growing up in Jim Crow Texas (he was born in 1941), through segregation, and he believed in grassroots and Black liberation.
He opened his gallery in 1973, mostly with his own paintings, but featuring other Black artists from the area.
He owned the gallery for more than 30 years, and created an entire culture of Black art in Oak Cliff.
I'm not an art critic, but I think his paintings and sketches have a simplicity of emotion, and capture moments of time quite well.
He and I lived in the same spaces, saw the same images, but in his art, I can see a perspective that I probably couldn't access otherwise.
That's the power of art, I suppose.
A memorial was put up near where his art studio was located, depicting some of his favorite works. The Dallas Museum of Art displayed some of his paintings as part of the Grant Hill collection 2004-2005.
Some lovely quotes from friends:
"He used his art to bring about a higher level of consciousness in the community, for he understood the purpose of art was to tell the truth."
“He was a gentle giant and very, very humble.”
More here: tshaonline.org/handbook/entri…
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