Loïs Mailou Jones (1905–1998)
Born in Boston, Loïs Mailou Jones studied at the acclaimed School of the Museum of Fine Arts in her hometown. Denied a teaching position at her alma mater because of her race, Jones soon thereafter joined the art faculty of Howard University in Washington, DC, where she taught for 47 years. In addition to her responsibilities at Howard, Jones pursued her own creative explorations, which included painting and illustration.
Her deep interest in ancestral legacy informs Africa, a canvas depicting three sharply defined figures with chiseled features. Executed in vibrant jewel-like hues, the trio’s symmetrical, elongated features and expressionless eyes recall similar visages found in African masks, a recurrent aesthetic component in Jones’s oeuvre. In both subject and style, Africa is a powerful elucidation of one of The Milk of Dreams’ three thematic inquiries: “the representation of bodies and their metamorphosis.”