Several of the paintings and prints in my collection of African American art are musicians with saxophones. I’ve always loved this instrument that sounds like an anguished soul.
So when I see artwork at auction with a saxophone, I tend to head towards it. That’s what happened not long ago when I saw nothing on the auction tables and started scanning the walls. I looked right smack into a black face – literally, the color black – playing a gold saxophone so long that it trailed off the canvas. Obviously, I walked right up to it.
The artist had signed only a last name, but I recognized it: Shedrick. It was a painting by a contemporary African American artist named Deborah Shedrick. I don’t buy much contemporary art, primarily because my interest is in the veterans. They’re the ones whose works usually end up at auction. They had been collected over the years and in most cases when their collectors passed on, family members discarded the artwork without realizing what they had. Their loss, my gain.
I came across my first Shedrick painting some years ago during an auction at the African American Museum in Philadelphia. A friend bought a small painting of hers, which I recall was an image of a woman. From time to time, I’d come across some of her prints on the web, but this was the first time I’d actually seen another original.
Recently, when I had an art appraiser to take a look at my collection for insurance purposes, she speculated that my Shedrick may have been an early painting. It was dated “94.”
After being introduced to Shedrick again, I wondered if her style had changed much from my friend’s work and this new one I had found. Googling, I saw that she had maintained her colorful style and female images, but now many of her figures were elongated.
I was especially intrigued by three of her paintings on the website of a New York art gallery. They were so different from her other works. In fact, they reminded me of the style of artist Moe Brooker, whose painting I picked up at that art-museum auction. I had to zoom in on the signature to make sure it was actually signed “Shedrick.”
I could not find a lot of information about Shedrick’s background, but I did see a lot of her artwork. She seems to have been interested in art since childhood, but didn’t take it on as her life’s calling until after going to college and getting a master’s degree in psychology. She started taking painting lessons in 1986.
“I’ve watched this woman go from being a starving artist as a young, single mom to watching the unveiling of her art in major hotels,” her sister LaVender Shedrick Williams wrote on Facebook. “I remember our parents telling her to get a job, but she kept painting. She followed her passion, and giving up has never been an option.”
Shedrick is primarily self-taught, augmenting her talent by attending workshops and learning from other artists. She works in acrylic, clay and mixed media. She also produces prints, which many artists now and before her used to make sure their works were affordable to all people.
Her works have graced book covers, been seen on TV shows and sold at fundraisers.
“Figurative, abstract, and mixed media are the languages in which I speak,” she states on the website Black Art in America. “There is an urgency and intense intimacy as I create. I rely on intuition and release all inhibitions as I create. My body of work is unique and individual, colorful, peaceful, spiritual.”
Some of her works are also textured. The painting I bought at auction has purplish embossed lines on the saxophonist’s sunglasses, copper lines on the saxophone and blue lines throughout the background.
“Each piece of my art is a love letter I have written to you,” Shedrick states. “When my art speaks to you and you are touched, my creative process is complete.”
