I'll Be Watching You, No. 2
Artist
Shirley Woodson Reid
(American, born 1936)
Date1996
MediumAcrylic on canvas
Dimensions66 × 52 in. (167.6 × 132.1 cm)
ClassificationsPainting
Object numberUAC7221
DescriptionShirley Woodson is an African American artist, collector, historian, and educator. Woodson earned her BFA in 1958 and her MA in 1965 from Wayne State University. She was born in 1936 in Pulaski, Tennessee. Due to the racial violence towards Black Americans in Pulaski, Woodson’s family moved to Detroit when she was just three months old (2021 Kresge Eminent Artist 16). By age seven, she already knew she wanted to be an artist, and her teachers saw her potential, “selecting her for special art extension classes” that were offered at the DIA (2021 Kresge Eminent Artist 18). Since then, Woodson has been painting for over 60 years (2021 Kresge Eminent Artist 12). She attributes her love of art to her complementary love of learning (2021 Kresge Eminent Artist 19-20).Woodson is primarily known for her vibrant figurative paintings of her life, environment, and African American history. Her work debuted in 1960 at a show of Michigan Artists at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Following this first exhibition, Woodson’s paintings have been featured in countless more. Her artwork has been included in exhibitions at the Academy of Arts and Letters in New York, the Oakland Museum in California, and internationally in Dakar, Senegal and Lagos, Nigeria. In addition to many group exhibitions, Woodson has been featured in over 30 solo exhibitions. She recently had a solo show at the Detroit Institute of Arts entitled Shirley Woodson: Shield of the Nile Reflections. Woodson is also the recipient of numerous awards, including MacDowell Residency, Creative Artists Grant, Detroit Council of the Arts and the New Initiatives for the Arts Exhibition Grant, the NCA Award for Artistic Excellence in 1977, the DIA Alain Locke Award in 1998, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Lillian Benbow Award, and the 2021 Kresge Eminent Artist Award, among many others. For Woodson, art has permeated throughout all aspects of her life: “All the threads of my life have been about art and its ability to connect and create ways of showing the beauty, the history and necessity of all art but particularly Black art” (2021 Kresge Eminent Artist 9). Throughout her life, she has been “dedicated to uplifting the beauty of Black art and breaking barriers of exclusion along the way” (2021 Kresge Eminent Artist 14).
Detroit artist Allie McGhee describes Woodson’s lively figurative paintings as “a sort of bridge between abstract and impressionism” (2021 Kresge Eminent Artist 33). Likewise, in her 1996 acrylic painting I’ll Be Watching You No. 2, Woodson’s diverse color palette and imaginative space demonstrate abstraction, while her expressive brushstrokes and outlines around figures are reminiscent of Impressionist painters like Renoir and Degas. The juxtaposition of fish and horse, along with the mixture of orange, fuschia, and blue blur the lines between land and sea and where the figures’ bodies end, further demonstrating her use of abstraction. The frontal figure is adorned in abundant color and lively brushstrokes. One arm stretches outward a bit, suggesting a sense of bewilderment within the expressive composition Woodson has created. The waves and the fish rise above the figure’s head, which may suggest that they are lost at sea. There are two figures in profile to the right of the work, with one raising their hands in a prayer-like gesture, as though in search of solace in the midst of tribulation. The title, I’ll Be Watching You, seems to possess some religious undertones, perhaps Christian in particular. It communicates that God is watching over the figures, protecting them. The horse in the middle of the water may allude to the Israelites crossing the Red Sea to escape slavery in Egypt. The plight of Jewish slaves in the Old Testament parallels the oppression of Black slaves. Both groups sought after God in their times of trouble: to use Moses to part the Red Sea and to establish the Black church as a space for expression and a source of hope. This motif in turn resonates with Woodson’s determination to uplift the Black community with her art. While the body language of the figures evokes a sense of struggle, Woodson’s electric use of color communicates that this is not meant to be a sad scene. Rather, these bright colors exude hope, optimism, and triumph.
Written by Angela Athnasios
Sources: https://www.sherryarts.com/shirley-woodson
https://dia.org/events/exhibitions/shirley-woodson-shield-nile-reflections
The Kresge Foundation, "A Palette for the People: The Vibrant World of Shirley Woodson, 2021 Kresge Eminent Artist."
Collections
