By Johnny Banks
Located in San Antonio, TX
Johnny Banks
(1912-1988)
San Antonio Artist
Image Size: 14 x 22
Frame Size: 21 x 29
Medium: mixed media
Circa 1970s
"The Safari Hunt for the Man Eating Tiger"
Biography
Johnny Banks (1912-1988)
In my opinion one of the greatest Texas folk artists of all time.
The following information was compiled and submitted by Stephanie Reeves:
John Willard Banks, San Antonio, Texas, African American Folk Artist John
Willard Banks, black self-taught artist, the son of Charlie and Cora
Lee (McIntyre) Banks, was born on November 7, 1912, near Seguin, Texas.
At the age of five his parents took him to San Antonio, where he
attended Holy Redeemer School until the age of nine, when his parents
were divorced and John returned to his grandparents' farm near Seguin.
From childhood Banks's favorite pastime was drawing pictures on his Big
Chief tablet. He later recalled, "As a kid I used to lie flat on my
stomach, drawing and drawing. . . . My mother had to kick me off the
floor to sweep."
While helping out on his grandparents' farm,
Banks completed the tenth grade before striking out on his own. His
favorite activities during his youth were singing in a gospel quartet
and playing baseball. In his adult years he worked in oilfields and
cotton fields, drove a truck, and tended a San Antonio service station.
During World War II he joined the army; he held the rank of sergeant
and was stationed in the Philippines. After the war he returned to San
Antonio, where he worked as a custodian at Kelly Air Force Base, at Fort
Sam Houston, and at a local television station. Banks married Edna Mae
Mitchell in 1928, and they had five children. The marriage ended in
divorce around 1960. In 1963 he married Earlie Smith.
His
art career began in 1978 while he was recuperating from an illness for
which he had been hospitalized. Banks's wife admired her husband's
drawings and secretly took several of them to a San Antonio laundromat.
There she hung the drawings on the wall, offering them for sale at the
price of fourteen dollars. They were purchased and taken to a gallery
for framing. Quite by chance, a San Antonio physician and collector of
works of art by black artists...
Category
1970s Folk Art Landscape Paintings
MaterialsCrayon, Mixed Media
