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Inez Nathaniel Walker's art is unique. Born into poverty in Sumter, South Carolina in 1911, Inez was orphaned at an early age. She was married when only 16 years old and quickly had four children. She then moved to Philadelphia to get away from the grueling farm work.
"Got tired of working so hard on the farm, weeding and hoeing," she told a reporter for New York State's "Correctional Services News" in 1978. "The muck would eat you up."
For awhile Inez worked at a pickle plant, but a strike brought that to an end. In 1949 she moved to Port Byron in New York State and went back to migrant farm work but at least the "muck" of South Carolina was missing. She lived and worked in several other places in New York, including Clyde, Savannah and Geneva.
Inez was imprisoned in the early 1970s for killing a man who had most-likely abused her. "Some of these men folks is pitiful," Inez told the newspaper reporter. It was while confined at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility (formerly known as Westfield State Farm) in Westchester County, New York State that she began to draw.
One day in early 1971 Elizabeth Bayley, a teacher of remedial English at the prison for women, found several drawings that had been anonymously left in a pile on a chair in her classroom and discovered they were done by Inez, a student in her class. There were 56 works in all, drawn on the backs of any paper Inez could find such as the prison newsletter, some prison evaluation sheets and forms. Mrs. Bayley was astounded by Inez's visionary talent, "Looking over them, I was struck by their originality, their humor and their amazing attention to detail," the teacher said. She brought her work to the attention of the art teacher who supplied her with drawing paper and sketch books, pens, pencils and crayons. Thus the following 23 works represented on this web site are on plain paper. Mrs. Bayley encouraged her to continue drawing and bought her works through the prison's arts and crafts department.
Inez became prolific and in a few months filled dozens of sketch books prior to her release from prison in 1972. Mrs. Bayley showed the drawings to Pat Parsons a local folk art dealer who purchased many of them for exhibition and Inez had her first show in late 1972. Pat Parsons then supplied Inez with first-rate materials: good paper, watercolors, pencils (both colored and graphite), ink crayons, and felt markers. These are reflected in her later work.
Inez drew the people around her, mainly the inmates whom she referred to as the "Bad Girls." The bad girls are often depicted in social situations engaging in the pleasures of drinking, smoking and conversing. Men and children only occasionally appear in her work.
After her release from prison, Inez lived quietly and simply in a small city in New York's Fingerlakes region, continued to draw and was glad to have the chance to show what she had done to visitors. She died in 1990.
I. Nathaniel Signature Inez Nathaniel-Walker is included in the Rosenak encyclopedia and in Black Folk Art in America, 1930-1980. Her work is represented by numerous galleries. Her drawings are in the Collection de l'Art Brut in Lausanne, Switzerland, the L'Arcanie, Neuilly-sur-Marne, near Paris as well as in a number of museums in the United States such as the Museum of American Folk Art, the Museum of International Folk Art and the Smithsonian. Since the early 80's Inez has been included in almost every major folk art book and catalog that includes the work of black folk artists.
Our Art Gallery also has work by Reverend Howard Finster, Inez Nathaniel Walker, William Edmondson, Thornton Dial, Missionary Mary Proctor, Miz Thang, Nancy Valelly, R A Miller, Jimmy Lee Sudduth, Mose Tolliver, folk pottery and all the great outsiders new or old.
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