Gary Monroe – författare

This text introduces a group of young black artists who painted their way out of the despair awaiting them in the citrus groves and packing houses of 1950s Florida. As their story recaptures the imagination of Floridians and their paintings fetch ever-escalating prices, the legacy of their freshly conceived landscapes exerts a new and powerful influence on the popular conception of the Sunshine State. Emerging in the late 1950s, the Highwaymen created idyllic, quickly realized images of the Florida dream and peddled some 100,000 of them from the trunks of their cars. Working with inexpensive materials, the Highwaymen produced an astonishing number of landscapes that depict a romanticized Florida - a faraway place of wind-swept palm trees, billowing cumulus clouds, wetlands, lakes, rivers, ocean, and setting sun. With paintings still wet, they loaded their cars and travelled the state's east coast, selling the images door-to-door and store-to-store, in restaurants, offices, courthouses and bank lobbies. Sometimes characterized as motel art, the work is a hybrid form of landscape painting, corrupting the classically influenced ideas of the Highwaymen's white mentor, A.E. ""Bean"" Backus. At first, the paintings sold like boom-time real estate. In succeeding decades, however, they were consigned to attics and garage sales. Rediscovered in the mid-1990s, today they are recognized as the work of American folk artists. Gary Monroe tells the story behind the Highwaymen, a loose association of 25 men and one woman from the Ft. Pierce area - a fascinating mixture of individual talent, collective enterprise and cultural heritage. He also offers a critical look at the paintings and the movement's development. Added to this are personal reminiscences by some of the artists, along with a gallery of 63 full-colour reproductions of their paintings.

The days are long past when tourists could buy an original landscape painting on the side of the road for as little as $50 dollars--sometimes before the paint dried. This new book of postcards allows you to experience the thrill of owning (miniature) versions of these exquisite paintings.

Before the high rises, the nightlife, and the fashion scene, Miami's South Beach was a retirement haven for American Jews. In The Last Resort, photographer Gary Monroe presents a collection of images that preserve his observations of this vanished time. After World War II, Jewish retirees from the Northeast—many of whom had come to America to escape Nazi Germany—found comfort, camaraderie, and culture in the sunny island city of Miami Beach. By the late 1950s, the population was 80% Jewish, and eventually the neighborhood of South Beach became home to a strong community of elderly Jews. A local who grew up in a Jewish household during this time, enchanted by the deep-rooted traditions and close-knit society of the older men and women he saw around him, Monroe set out to capture their world.Taken over the span of 10 years, Monroe's photographs chronicle the day-to-day activities of the community from sunrise to sunset. Full of energy, love, misery, and heartbreak, these images portray a shared vision of richly lived lives. During this time, card rooms became makeshift temples. People enjoyed sunrise swims in the ocean. The streets were active. Neighbors cared for each other. On Friday evenings, women lit Shabbos candles. Through these scenes, Monroe's work documents the efforts of the aging South Beach residents to maintain their dignity, mores, and lifestyle. The Last Resort memorializes an era, a culture, and a history. Gary Monroe offers an exquisitely rendered portrait of a special community most people have forgotten.

In the years since the art world discovered them, much has been made of the Highwaymen—the loosely knit band of African American painters whose edenic Florida landscapes, created with inexpensive materials and sold out of their cars, "shaped the state's popular image as much as oranges and alligators" (New York Times). But lost in the legends surrounding the group is the mesmerizing story of Mary Ann Carroll (1940-2019), the only female "Highwayman."In 1957, sixteen-year-old Carroll met Harold Newton, later dubbed the original Highwayman. He was painting a landscape along the side of the road. There were red flames on his car. Yet what shocked the young African American girl most of all was discovering a black man who didn't work in the orange groves, who made a living off of his paintings. It wasn't long before she was creating and selling her own landscapes, and the other Highwaymen, taking note of her startling use of color, welcomed her into the fold.Carroll sold her first painting at eighteen—remarkable for any young artist, unheard of for a black woman in the South. Like her Highwaymen brethren, she travelled across the state, selling her art at hotels, offices, and restaurants where she was not allowed to drink, eat, or even sit. If the Highwaymen faced discrimination at every door they knocked on, then the challenges—and dangers—were magnified for Carroll. She took pride in always having her pristine Buick gassed and ready to go and her small handgun cleaned and ready to use.After years of virtual obscurity, Carroll was invited to the First Lady's Luncheon in 2011, where she presented a painting of her iconic poinciana to Michelle Obama. Today, she is pastor of the Foundation Revival Center in Fort Pierce, is an accomplished artist and musician, and still paints and exhibits her work widely.Mary Ann Carroll is the never-before-told story of a black female artist's hard-fought journey to provide for her family while also making a name for herself in a man's world.