"My belief is that it is most important for an artist to develop an approach and philosophy about life - if he has developed this philosophy, he does not put paint on canvas, he puts himself on canvas." --Jacob Lawrence, 1946

Jacob Lawrence was a firm believer in the ability of art to affect change. He approached the creative process like his life, with great honesty and emotional integrity. Lawrence is best known for the Migration of the Negro, an epic narrative series of sixty paintings that he completed in 1941 at the age of twenty-four. The series, which was painted in bright tempera paints on small hardboard panels - all of which are accompanied by captions - depicts the flight of millions of African-Americans from the rural South to the urban North during and after the first World War. The series is a unique blend of styles, part mural painting, part social realism, and part modernist abstraction. Shortly after, Lawrence became the first African-American painter to be represented by a major commercial gallery and the first to receive recognition from the mainstream American art world. For more on Jacob Lawrence, visit http://www.jacoblawrence.org.