Gregory Newson’s journey started long before he became a Black Panther Party participant in 1970s Harlem, New York, where he gave up painting. “I won a few teen art shows to embrace community rhetoric and victim mentality thinking which destroyed my self-confidence and the gift that the creator gave me,” he says. Today, Newson is busy writing an autobiography entitled I Get High Watching Painting Dry.
The Weep, oil on canvas, 25 x 18.5"
Mattress Cotton, acrylic on illustration board, 17 x 20"
“In my opinion what destroyed me as a promising artist and my community was the cherry-picked history fed to us by our government and political figures. History is a political persuasion tool which the winner of wars gets to deliver,” Newson says. “This is why some of the writings of Jesus Christ’s Apostles were left out of the King James version of the Bible.”
I Wish I had Coffee, giclée canvas print, 22 x 27"
In his earlier days, Newson worked in acrylic paint in combination with brush and airbrush work and digital persuasion tools.
He made Mattress Cotton 25 years ago during a time when he was working as the advertising and marketing director for the Cotton Club in New York City and was greatly influenced by the watercolors of Dong Kingman. Today, Newson says he’s frustrated working on canvas because he can’t seem to make a reproduction without the texture of the canvas showing through. Newson, who lives in Conway, South Carolina, welcomes any advice or suggestions from readers that might help solve this problem. —
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