Educational Media Reviews Online

Instead of making a living from picking local crops like tomatoes and oranges, a group of young African-Americans decided to travel the Florida highways, selling their landscape paintings to real estate agencies, doctor’s offices, and banks.

In the 1950s and 1960s, their dramatic, flamboyant, and bold works fetched an average of $35. Today, however, they’re sought-after prizes for art collectors, with four- and five-figure price tags.

The Highwaymen: Florida’s Outsider Artists explains how Alfred Hair, a high school senior from Fort Pierce, Florida, got his start in painting in 1955 with the help of white artist Albert E. “Bean” Backus. Then, the film documents how Hair, Harold Newton, and other friends produced Florida landscape paintings in assembly-line fashion, using fast brushstrokes and inexpensive materials producing prolific results.

The program features interviews with fellow Highwayman Al Black, now painting from prison; pastor Mary Ann Carroll, the only female member of the group; and art gallery owner Jim Fitch, who coined the term “Highwaymen” in 1994. Other Highwaymen demonstrate the group’s artistic techniques.

Considered to have created between 50,000 and 200,000 paintings, the Highwaymen are popular among today’s collectors. The final portion of the program focuses on how E-Bay has expanded the Highwaymen’s market, with paintings now selling for up to $12,500. Art collectors and dealers who “throw crazy money at E-Bay and contribute to the craze” explain what makes the Highwaymen so attractive. Sponsored by Grant Antique Mall and art dealer Geoff Cook, the program ends with online resources to learn about and purchase Highwaymen works.

The Highwaymen is professionally presented, with clear audio and video and effective editing. Vintage film footage of Florida cities and the civil rights movement’s impact on the state provide valuable historical context for the story being presented. Additional features contained in the DVD version of the program include both a gallery of 56 paintings from 14 Highwaymen and biographies of Hair, Newton, and Backus.

Academic libraries should consider purchasing The Highwaymen: Florida’s Outsider Artists to complement college and university programs in studio art, art history and arts management. Visual resources librarians, museum curators, and information professionals interested in digital imagery would also benefit from learning about the 7500-item digital image database of Highwaymen paintings that is described in the program.