Lois Mailou Jones

Raised in Boston, Lois Mailou Jones enjoyed art as a youth. During high school, she took night classes at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and began exhibiting her artwork. She went on to graduate from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and, later, obtained a degree in art education at Howard University. In 1928, Jones accepted a teaching position at Palmer Memorial Institute in North Carolina, before being recruited by Howard, where she taught design and painting from 1930 to 1977, training such artists as David Driskell, Elizabeth Catlett, and Sylvia Snowden. In 1970, she began serving the US Information Agency as cultural ambassador to Africa.

Jones spent summers in Harlem during the early days of the Harlem Renaissance; took a sabbatical year in Paris; studied African and other masks from non-Western cultures; and visited Haiti regularly. All of these elements heavily influenced her artwork. Though her early Impressionist style recurred throughout her career, she steadily incorporated bold colors as well as African objects, design and spiritual elements.