This is a story about resilience, courage, talent and a Black man born in the segregated Deep South whose tenacious spirit succeeded in an arena not of music or sports, but the visual arts. Truly an exceptional journey. And an exceptional man.
Richard Haynes, a 77-year-old artist who stands out in a myriad of artistic expressions — photography, drawing, painting — is the epitome of grateful. Spiritual. And humble. A model of how it can be done. But per real life, it doesn’t happen overnight, and it doesn’t happen without learning some hard lessons.
Haynes, who resides in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, has an upcoming exhibition, “Learning to See,” at Brattleboro Museum & Art Center in Vermont. He’s a visual storyteller whose bright, daring images kindle a sense of connection that flies in the face of racial discrimination. His work has gained national recognition over the years and is part of the permanent collections of the Currier Museum of Art, Massachusetts General Hospital, Dana Farber Cancer Center, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library, among other institutions.
“Richard Haynes’s work,” said Alison Crites, curator for the show, “begins with a simple but radical question: how do we learn to see one another? Across drawing, painting, and photography, he reveals that seeing is not neutral, but something formed by experience — and something that can be transformed. By reimagining America’s history of division as one of connection, Haynes invites us to look again and see new possibilities in the way we understand one another.”