The documentary showcases some of Hunter’s most popular pieces as well as clips and footage of Hunter’s hometown in the Cane River region of Louisiana. “And this is what experienced, these are the things that come into my head as marked these pictures.” “She was a documentarian…, this is what knew,” Price said. Henry Price, supervisor of art for the Caddo Parish School Board, also spoke on the panel. Bellow follows Hunter’s evolution from her life as young girl working on the plantation until her death, at which point Hunter was a world-renowned artist. “Clementine Hunter’s World” is narrated by San Francisco-based journalist Noelle Bellow. “If you look at her paintings, it’s a body of work that says, ‘This is how we lived,’” Shiver said in the panel. Mignon prompted Hunter to paint some of her most popular works still to date, including her African House murals. “In spite of all the difficulty, he never gave up,” Shiver said on Mignon’s persistent support of Hunter during the panel that followed the screening. Mignon and Hunter forged a lifelong friendship. After seeing Hunter’s first painting she made of a baptism in Cane River, Mignon recognized Hunter’s artistic talent. She painted everyday life on the plantation.įrancois Mignon, the plantation curator at Melrose, supported Hunter’s artistic career and supplied her with paint and materials. Hunter began to paint after she found brushes and tubes of paint in the house she worked in, and she began to gain exposure in the 1950s. Hunter spent nearly all of her time farming in the fields or working inside the plantation house as a domestic worker. The documentary follows Hunter as she grows up on a plantation in the early 20th century. Hunter, whose grandparents had been enslaved, worked as a laborer with her family at the Melrose Plantation near Natchitoches, Louisiana.ĭespite Hunter’s preference when she was young for working in the fields over “book learning,” she would go on to become one of the country’s most influential folk artists and painters - documenting plantation life through the eyes of a black woman. The documentary, created by filmmaker Art Shiver, premiered on March 24 during a special screening at the Oprah Winfrey Theater in the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. “Clementine Hunter’s World” tells the story of her life. Self-taught, she would later become one of the most prominent folk artists of her time.
Clementine Hunter was born into a laboring family on a Louisiana plantation about 20 years after the abolition of slavery.
Clementine Hunter’s art piece titled “Picking Cotton.” WIKIMEDIA COMMONS