Aaron+Douglas

By Kindergarten, First and Second grades

Aaron Douglas was an artist and he was born in 1899. He was born in Topeka, Kansas. He was called "The Father of African American Art". He painted great, magnificent art. Many people wanted to see his paintings. He was a free man because he had a free life.

Aaron Douglas went to Harlem in 1925. He was 26. In 1925 the Harlem Renaissance had started. When Aaron Douglas got to Harlem he illustrated magazines such as the Crisis and Opportunity. He used zig zag lines, curvy lines and outside lines.

When Aaron Douglas was a child, his mother inspired him by painting with watercolors. Other artists inspired him like Henry Ossawa Tanner. When Romare Bearden interviewed Aaron Douglas, Aaron told how his mother brought home a magazine and he was fascinated by a painting of Christ and Nicodemus by Henry Ossawa Tanner. He studied it and looked at it and looked at it and that inspired him to become an artist. Aaron Douglas also got a lot of inspiration from African art because it was beautiful.

Aaron Douglas was one of the co-founders of a magazine called Fire, and they made only one issue because the publishing place caught on fire. Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes wrote in the magazine Fire.

Aaron Douglas worked for the WPA in the Great Depression. The WPA hired many artists to paint murals so people would feel happier because they would have jobs, and they could make art. Aaron Douglas painted 7 murals between 1930 and 1937.

In 1937 Aaron Douglas got a fellowship and he went to Haiti to study Haitian art. He went to Fisk University for a job in 1938. He taught at Fisk University for 29 years. He died in 1979 in Nashville, Tennessee.

Aaron Douglas made lots of art. His murals were different shades of dark colors and some light colors. The people look like shadows. His murals are telling a story about history. In some murals, people are dancing in the light. His drawings look like outside lines, and they are all black and white and the lines are squiggly and zig zag, and the circles go around and around and around. When you stare at it, it hypnotizes you. Sometimes his drawings look like Picasso.

Here's something that Aaron Douglas once said. At the very last end, remember this:

"Let's bare our arms and plunge them deep through laughter, through pain, through sorrow, through disappointment, into the very depths of our people and drag forth material crude, rough, neglected. Then let's sing it, dance it, write it, paint it. Let's do the impossible."