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Detroit artist Shirley Woodson first displayed her paintings in 1960 at the Detroit Institute of Art. Since then, she's had more than 30 solo exhibitions around the world.
The renowned Detroit artist, educator and advocate now presents 11 vibrant, dream-like paintings at her first solo DIA exhibit, "Shield of the Nile Reflections." The paintings include Black bathers in rivers and honor the magic of the Nile.
"In this series, Woodson’s bathers appear with a distinctive visual vocabulary of human and animal life that symbolizes the historic, spiritual, and cultural significance of the river," the museum notes.
Writing recently in Detroit Art Review, local journalist-author Michael Hodges says:
Her freely rendered, lush canvases pack a vibrance and hard-to-define emotional punch. Wielding vivid color, symbols and figures, Woodson creates bright, inscrutable canvases laden with totemic meaning. ...
Woodson ... has been working with the Nile for decades, seeing in the world’s longest river a metaphor for Africa and the African experience generally. ... But for all its possible symbolism, 'Shield of the Nile' succeeds most extravagantly as a lavish color study whose warmth you can practically feel from across the room.
The 86-year-old painter, a formner Detroit Public Schools art teacher, has 1958 and 1965 degrees from Wayne State University and is a 2021 Kresge Eminent Artist.
Deadline Detroit photojournalist Michael Lucido visited with Woodson at the DIA the other day to talk about her art:
