When we are, it's not easy to pray at a party.
When we have sung our last song, and prayed our last prayer.
When our name is called and decided, we are not no longer a pest of us.
We do ask you to give us a home.
So where are you going?
There where the wicked receive us from trouble us.
Now we're a soul.
Honey, give me the entrance.
And all of these things are actually in your son and Jesus' name.
We pray, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen.
Amen.
All my life as a little girl I could draw most of the things I seen.
And I was very creative as a kid.
I have felt bad and I could sit down and start looking at a piece of artwork.
Mine or whoever and drift off into it and forget about how you really feel.
Now when I paint something like this, my mind is free.
I'm free.
I have a pretty good feeling inside.
And if my mind is free and clear when I start, I always see the difference in it.
My mentor is Harold Newton.
Harold the first time that I saw him, he had a, I don't remember what kind of car he had,
but it had a flame where he had some fire, like fire.
And this is when I learned that he was an artist and he showed me a painting he had in the back of the seat.
I was probably around 17, 16, something like that.
I wasn't that old.
So then one day I saw a painting in his yard and I stopped.
I asked him what he showed me and he said yes.
He took me up by 18 by 24, piece of ups and board and he mixed all my paint.
I didn't really like the colors, but he was the artist, you know.
So that went on and he told me what to do and I did it.
And I didn't know how to make trees, the palm trees, no kind of tree really.
He took and put my two palm trees in that co-face and each other.
And that was my first assisted painting and I just kept blundering ever since.
Now this part here, I have to cross it out because it's not true.
See, Harold wasn't there with my boyfriend.
He took me on a dinner date, not a lover's date.
They got a little reckless with the truth, huh?
Yeah, they did.
So they dated for a while, although they did not last.
That's not true.
He was the first artist that I remember seeing.
And then later I think I met Blood, I met Castro, I met all the rest of the artists.
As the only female artist in the highway, I really got joy out of my painting and being around the guys.
Fort Pierce was an orange grove city.
Most of the guys would go out and pick fruit.
But then when Harold Newton got on, I never remember Harold picking fruit.
We come to Georgia and the rest of the guys are out in the field.
And he would get out there and paint.
Men's and women's was working in the orange grove.
Some of the women could pick just about as much fruit as a man could.
More than a man.
But I never picked fruit because it was too many thorns.
Some of the thorns on those trees were this long.
It's a pretty hard label.
Pretty hard label.
It wasn't me running from the orange grove anything, which I never ran to it either.
I just love art.
The highwaymen, if you're familiar with it like I was, that was, you know, Chris Christofferson, Willie Nelson.
I'm a country music nut.
Those guys, that was the highwaymen that's probably more popular in the U.S.
Well, the term itself is pretty old historic.
If you ever see the video, the stage coach robbers and those guys coming and taking jewels, taking what they will from the carriages and moving on.
You can ask about 10 years to clarify.
The highwaymen painters are artists that did not steal from people.
They went out there and door to door.
That's why they got the name highwaymen.
You're going door to door to sell the paintings.
You're knocking on doors.
You're standing roadside, curbside with your paintings.
Yes.
That's right.
On the side of the cars.
On the streets.
We were called Hotel Art, Motel Art.
And no one would take our paintings in galleries.
I didn't know how to sell them.
So the first time I think I went out to sell, by myself was after Castro.
After Livingston Robbins, they wanted to go sell.
One day they didn't have a car.
And so they said, man, we need to make some money.
So we got no car.
I said, I got one.
I'll take it if you help me sell mine.
I said, okay, let's go.
I jumped in my car, went back to the house.
Got my paintings and all.
Got on the road.
We went up to Melbourne.
The first painting sold was one of mine.
I really didn't want to be an artist.
I wanted to be a salesman.
Because if I can sell, I can sell Alaska.
Blood was actually the only real sales person.
He would go out and get the money.
One time he said, how much you won't fund me, Ran?
How much you won't fund?
I said, well, all I can get is a dog, a dog, a dog.
Tim, how much you won't fund?
Me and Miss Carol, we used to have a lot of fun.
Her daughters and them used to go with me to sell sometime.
And people would have the big dogs in the yard and they'd get at me.
When I'd be going up to the house to sell the paintings, me and my daughters and them
would just bust out and start laughing after I'd get up and start running.
They had the door locked and I'm hollering at the door saying, open the door, open the door.
No, I never gave much problem, you know, because I was, but you might call a tomboy.
And I could fist fight.
I could wrestle.
And you had to be a son of a good man to throw me.
And if you didn't mess around, I'd whip you.
So, therefore, I was never afraid.
You know, this gave me some courage and I wasn't afraid to tackle a bear if I had to.
They have given me ultimate respect.
And if one didn't do it, I could earn it myself because I had some muscles.
I treasure wisdom and I treasure strength and I can do pretty good.
They ran, was a nice, nice lady.
Well, she had to be, she'd come to be a pastor.
She had to lead the people.
We all see Jesus, we sing and shout to victory.
Oh, when we all get to heaven.
I can't paint a painting without thinking of God because he created the earth.
And a lot of times I have been working in my mind.
I couldn't sell my mind on anything and I just, I'd have killed myself right below where I am.
And it may sound like a joke, but I've done that.
And when I started, everything just started to fall into place.
And some of those paintings have been some of the best that I've done.
A lot of people may not understand that, but it's, it's very true.
What am I painting?
Back where I was stretching around a little fish creek.
Cows might drink out at their birds, might go and nest in it at night.
I don't want to ever get food.
There's one little regular area in Fort Pierce.
They might not even find it now.
And most of this stuff is gone.
You know, it's a, it's a thing.
We tried to capture some of the things of the past.
It's just amazing.
What's amazing?
The beauty that God has created.
You know, a man come along and destroy and tear it up.
Roy Ponson, this is a tree.
They used to be very flourishing around here.
Everywhere you look, you can see four or five and six at one spot.
And then something happened.
I don't know where the weather went, but something happened and they didn't.
They stopped growing like that.
You take like some time.
I go down certain streets that haven't went in a long time.
And it just almost looked like I'm lost.
They started painting these paintings in the early fifties.
With these paintings, you know, it takes you back.
These paintings are the history.
Oh, drinking all the wine.
Oh, drinking all the wine.
Civil rights and stuff was going on.
And I've been out setting paintings.
But I never really let it get next to me as to what might happen.
But it was really, it was a really terrible time.
You know, some places we couldn't go.
If you went, you were taking a chance.
And the thing is, I just didn't go.
Well, it was, it was divided in several.
In the early sixties, you didn't find too many black salesmen.
That's why some of the times it was,
it wasn't always easy because they wanted to know
what these little black boys doing walking down the street
with some paintings.
People didn't feel like a black person could come up with nothing,
look that good.
Some of that, I don't even want to think about racism.
Yeah, I don't want to think about some of it.
Sometime you might knock on a door and ask some sale.
I have some paintings once you know what you're being us today.
So wait just a minute.
So I'll be right back so I might want some.
And when you come back, they have four or five police with them.
They go across this canal here.
Most of it was on that side was white people.
On this side was most of black.
Oh, I've been in jail a hundred and eighty-five times.
But I always was a big talker.
Most of the time I talked my way out of it.
It was a lot of bad times, sad times.
All poverty stricken times.
They go redneck or whatever times.
But it's some things that you learn to live around
and get caught up in it.
Life is just what you make it be.
It can be beautiful.
And it can be entangling.
I don't know how you see it.
The phenomenal thing about mother is that
she's passionate about whatever she does.
She has to understand it intrinsically.
Since she was a little girl,
she has to know how things work.
She would take things apart and put things back together.
So she has a very philosophical, scientific mind
that drives her.
I used to practice doing things that others
said they couldn't do.
Picking locks.
I just thank God I'm not a rogue.
You're singing, you're getting this one.
Go ahead.
And Lord, we realize that without you
there would be no food, there would be no Thanksgiving.
And we're thanking you today on Thanksgiving
because we are grateful.
Amen.
Amen.
My first art exhibit was on the bulletin board
at Mean School, the elementary school.
I was in the third grade.
And that was my first art exhibit when I think about it.
I didn't get in the gallery, but I got on the board.
You don't give me something to drink too.
I'm hungry, please.
In my life also, I had responsibility
that the guys didn't have.
All of them had children, but they were by different ladies.
And they were not kids that they had to sit up and babysit
and pen on diapers and feed fixed formators.
When my ex-husband walked out the house,
I think my baby was five years old.
My hands were full, so I couldn't get out and run
like the guys did every day.
I distinctly remember her always stopping painting,
wiping off her brushes and so forth
and jumping in the car to run us here, to run us there,
run us to school, run to meetings,
and then going back and resuming
or picking up where she left off.
I was able to raise seven children and sing a parent.
And I thank God for it.
And I thank the people that helped me make it possible
because if they hadn't brought them up, wouldn't have been.
And you can't get up on the porch without stepping on steps.
You can't.
Be God's giving
No matter how you try.
This is where we started.
This building actually, a hurricane come through
and towed out on a packing house.
And they were giving away the lumber and stuff.
You don't know like I know
Oh, you don't know like I know
Oh, you don't know like I know
Oh, I know, I know
So the floor in here, it had two floors,
a subfloor and a top floor.
And it did it like that so that, you know,
not the concrete, so that when people shout,
they can hear the shoes.
And you could take a stick or something hit the floor
and have make some noise because it didn't have no,
no, you know, like all this music people have now
so just make and do it what you had.
Whatever it took to bring that buck into the house.
Okay, I'll hammer, I'll shingle a roof today.
I'll go and tow a car today.
She doesn't believe in the word no or stop.
Most ladies like to fix up the hair,
rouge up the mouth and powder up the face
and fix the fingernails and that's all right with them
but me myself, I always desire that my money
was better than anybody that anybody could give me.
Husband, boyfriend or whatever, I earned it.
I knew the value of it.
I watched how this woman who's supposed to be,
who grew up in a time where you're supposed to be wearing
the aprons and minded the kids and your husband goes out
and makes the money.
Well, my mom raised seven kids on painting, on art.
I believe that my responsibility
has made me a better woman
but I could have gotten to the point in life
and said it can't be done but I just found out
it can't be done and it was done.
It's a happiness to me even though it may have been
a rough spot where you can find happiness in something
that's terrible.
You've got to be crazy.
I have a lot of good sense.
I think I had good sense.
That movie that we wrote was actually,
it was like a beacon to a ship out in the middle of the ocean.
It brought us into land and I'm grateful.
I consider it like, you know, there was a California gold rush
when everybody was rushing out to get the gold.
It was a Florida art rush.
A lot of people had thrown paintings in the garbage,
taking them out to see it and put them inside the road.
When this book came out, people went to start back
looking for what they had thrown away.
You have to see some of these people
expressing on their face.
They looked so hurt, they looked so down
and looked like they could flip their own self.
So they, yeah, I am with a treasure in my hand
and I just threw it away, you know.
The same paintings that I was selling back in the days
for $35 or $40, I seen some of the same paintings
sold for $10,000 and $20,000.
He found a diamond in the roof and it got polished up
and then everybody could see it the way it was.
We don't have to go around and see it
like we used to, people, the same people
that I used to go out and knock on their doors,
they come knock on my door now.
And we would know that we are historians
of the state of Florida.
We went into the Artists Hall of Fame in 2004.
They made a trophy for us and we all went up
to meet the governor.
I am one of the actors here at the History Center
and was asked last year to portray you.
You're the only character that's alive that I portray.
And you have to stay there.
No, I portray other women, but they are deceased.
So I'm so glad and please stay in good health, okay?
I do my best for the grace of God.
Queen of the Roe.
That's what they say.
We have had proclamation days given to us in Tampa,
Eatonville and they even did something in Fort Pierce.
Can I have a picture of you, Hans?
Because I think you're Hans' big...
So my hands speak.
And I just about fell on my shoes when I saw the price of it.
I said, I got to have it.
And I said, I'm just hoping Miss Mary Ann has a small one
that I can afford to get.
I always want to feel that the price I asked is fair.
I have to value it more because
I'm actually putting more money in it.
There was some elderly people who wanted to paint one day.
They didn't have quite enough money.
I let them have it anyway.
These were some of the happiest people when they left.
It's not all about, I mean, it's not all about the mighty dollar.
I know we got to have some money,
but to see laughter and happiness all a person's face.
People take life for granted.
We see the sunrise, we pay no attention.
We see the set, we pay no attention.
We feel the wind blow, we pay no attention.
We don't even know how blessed we are just to be able to smell.
Just to smell.
I either stand up or fall down.
And I've always been determined to stand.
Like a situation is no rougher than you let it get in your mind.
Mentally, I've conquered a lot of things mentally,
and I don't have any regret.
But I know it wasn't easy.
I know it wasn't easy, but look at that, it made it easy.
I made it easy through the mind, you know, I guess.
I don't know.
But I never felt like a job was too hard for me to try.
Even if it was digging ditches.
So this was nothing different, it was a challenge, you know?
And I've always felt like I could win.
And I did.
I won't let go.
