“I don’t know how I did it. But I did it.” — Minnie Evans
Enjoy a must-watch documentary short on self-taught artist Minnie Evans. Part of the Visions of Paradise documentary series directed by Allie Light and Irving Saraf.
Minnie Evans is the embodiment of the visionary artist. She is an 88-year-old Black painter in North Carolina who has created a rich world of mythical animals, religious symbols, and natural beauty. The film explores the sources of her art, focusing on her mystical visions, on Airlie Garden, with its magnificent azaleas and swans, where she worked for 27 years and did most of her paintings, and on the African-Methodist church where the connection between her art and her religious fervor becomes evident. She tells about her mystical visions and traces her slave ancestry to her great grandmother’s grandmother who was brought from Trinidad and sold as a slave in North Carolina. We see Minnie with her 101 year old mother and at the Evans’ family reunion of six generations.
via Light-Saraf Films
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