Dangerous Places
Batik on cotton mounted on masonite
37 1/4 x 29 1/8 inches
2007
As published in:
Messages from Home: The Art of Leo Twiggs
As exhibited in:
Requiem for Mother Emanuel, 2016–2018, TJC Gallery, Spartanburg, South Carolina; Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, North Carolina; I.P. Stanback Museum, South Carolina State University, Orangeburg, South Carolina; Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn, Alabma; South Carolina State Museum, Columbia, South Carolina
Messages from Home: The Art of Leo Twiggs, 2020–2021, Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, Georgia
Elevation from Within: The Study of Art at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, 2019–2024, Richardson Family Art Museum, Wofford College, Spartanburg, South Carolina, 2021; Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, 2022, Florida A&M University, Tallahassee, Florida, 2023, Morgan State University, Baltimore, Maryland, 2024
“Art,” according to Leo Twiggs, “is the repository of human experience.” For over sixty years, Dr. Twiggs’s experiences—as an African American man born in the segregated South, as the first black graduate of the University of Georgia’s art education doctoral program, as a father, teacher, and artist—have infused his paintings. His life story includes personal and aesthetic confrontations with symbols of hate, particularly the Confederate flag.
The eldest of seven children, Leo Franklin Twiggs was in the tenth grade when his father died. He quickly assumed the role of head of the household and worked six days a week at the local movie theater in St. Stephen, South Carolina, to help with the family finances. When he secured a place at Claflin College, his widowed mother sold one of their three cows to pay his tuition. At Claflin, Arthur Rose, chair of the art department, mentored Twiggs both in and out of the classroom. In 1956, Twiggs graduated summa cum laude with majors in art, history, and English. After service in the Army Signal Corps and a brief time teaching at the high school level, he sought to advance his education. With no state-sponsored graduate program available to black South Carolinians at mid-century, he enrolled at New York University, where he studied under acclaimed artist Hale Woodruff.
With his master’s degree in art education in hand, Twiggs returned to Orangeburg in 1964 to join the faculty at South Carolina State University. During his thirty-four-year tenure, he started the art department and was instrumental in opening and running the I. P. Stanback Museum and Planetarium on campus. Three years into his time at SCSU, the University of Georgia invited him to enter in its art education graduate program. For the following three years, Twiggs traveled between Athens and Orangeburg. He was in Georgia when the Orangeburg Massacre left three HBCU students dead; he quickly drove home “to find tanks blocking streets and guards restricting access.” The artist retired from teaching in 1998 to devote himself to his own batik practice.
Other works by this artist