I don’t drink I don’t smoke I listen to jazz and I paint.” “I’m doing exactly what I would do if I retired, or if this (Clinton painting) never happened. sometimes just so I can get in here and make my paintings,” he says. But mention any aspect of his work and his eyes begin to shine, the words spilling out as he marvels that, in a stroke of luck he still can’t seem to believe, he’s able to combine his passion for art with his work. The Clinton portrait, and the surrounding media crush, has changed Knox’s life. He’s the first black artist to paint an official presidential portrait - the “Pulitzer Prize of portrait painting,” he says. When Knox’s portrait of President Clinton was unveiled last week at the White House, it was the culmination of a lifetime of hard work. “Mine is a story of patience and perseverance.” “If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way to do it,” Knox says. Inside the converted one-car garage that he’s outfitted with large windows, sliding glass doors and a ventilation system to filter out the oil additives he uses to mix his paint, Knox jiggles his leather sandals in time to Cyrus Chestnut’s piano - one of hundreds of jazz CDs and records precariously stacked on shelves behind him.Īn oscillating fan stirs the humid air as the 68-year-old artist ticks off a list of the other places he’s used as studios over a 50-year career that’s taken him from a childhood spent working the fields in Alabama to becoming one of America’s best portrait painters: his bedroom, a small room above an auto-body shop with pigeons roosting in the rafters, his bathroom. Butterflies flutter over lush green lawns as a breeze shimmies through the trees. Outside Simmie Knox’s studio in Silver Spring, Md., the spring day is warm and inviting, a perfect vision of suburban bliss.Ĭhildren sell lemonade at a curbside stand.
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