0.24 Edward mills, b. 1941  (Page 2/2)

In my freshman year he had us drawing from nature. He had us drawing pine trees, so as we went outside we painted and we drew pine trees. We came back in and he said, “Put your work up. We’re going to analyze it.” So we put the work up. He analyzed everything. He started from the left, and I put mine up on the right at the bottom—last one. So when he got to me he just looked and he put his hand up and he squinted his eyes and turned around and he said, “This student, I can’t teach him nothing. I can’t teach him nothing.” He said, “You’re just wasting your time in this drawing class.” So as a freshman he put me in a painting class. This is the essence of how he was. He didn’t hold you back.

A student of the sixties

I spent my days at TSU painting. I spent my evenings at work. The only thing we could do at the time was basically [be a] janitor, so I was a custodian. I would get home at 12:00 a.m.; sometimes I would paint until about 4:00 a.m., something like that, then I’d go to sleep, wake up and go back to school. Just a circle. I didn’t go to any museums then. The first museum I went to was the Museum of Fine Arts, and that was about five years ago. I saw what I was missing. Most of what we had done at that time was go to exhibits that would come to TSU. This is where we familiarized ourselves with other artists and their works. Now I did read. My favorite artist is Leonardo da Vinci and what’s his name—Michelangelo. These are my two favorite artists, then comes Charles White,

There were happy times and sad times. In the 60s the police department came on the campus of Texas Southern University and shot at a men’s dorm. About maybe three students had a gun and they shot back. A policeman was killed. They had a trial and all this. And I don’t think the students had anything in mind about attacking the police department. So that was a negative—one of the biggest negatives. I’ve always been interested in the history of those things that were negative, as far as I’m concerned, in society: the injustices that I felt were perpetrated toward black people. So I began to draw about that which is negative in society. Something about the turbulence of the 60s…this is when I got a little deeper towards painting about things in society that I again felt was negative. Now, many people who view my work would say, “Mills, you don’t like white people.” But [what] I’m transmitting is [the]negative that some whites have done.

What it means to be an artist

At one time I tried to paint a cloud in the evening. The cloud was so beautiful, and I thought I could reproduce that. And I sat down and looked at it about three times and the cloud had changed. So you also have to grasp your memory. You have to take a mental photograph of what it is you see and then reproduce it as best you can. And in my opinion, that’s what an artist is.

To be an artist you would actually want to go to the top and that simply means that you become a master. And if you become a master, then you’re anointed with what I would call spirituality because God is a creator and we are created to [reflect] his artwork. In the Bible he speaks of the potter and he relates that to man, and actually [to]dirt. [An artist is] simply one that I feel is true to himself. He looks into society; the only thing he can do is paint a negative or a positive from society.

The reason I focus on the subject matter that I focus on in my artwork is because the history that I read is not true as it relates to black people. There is no true record, and even though I get negatives from people who say, “Why do you paint about these things,” I paint about the things I paint about, draw about the things I draw about because this is what I would call a carryover from reading history. So I chose to paint about negative things in society. Like I’ve said before, basically as a record. I’m not a total record-keeper, but I do it for that reason—so it can be passed on to youth because they have forgotten.

I’ve noticed that most of the exhibits that I have exhibited in, they gravitate to my work, and I’m thinking they gravitate to it because it interests them. They can relate to it. It’s something within that they feel, but don’t see. And once they see it, something in them is dissatisfied. They come to me with questions and I can see [their] questions. I can see a void in their eyes as they look at me and question me about the subject matter and how it was during [my]time. And I often tell them that it’s the same way during your time, it’s just a different form.

Edward Mills was interviewed on September 8, 2006. You can listen to the interview here .