When discussing Singleton's work, "I would always tell him 'Forget the label self-trained, outsider or whatever,' " artist Willie Birch said. "He was a great artist and at some point in his life his work would be recognized as great art."

As I’ve mulled over what to say about the execution of Reflections II, I’ve found myself learning things about my working process of which I was previously only marginally aware. So it’s been an interesting exercise.

“[My] work is informed by the needlework traditions of southern women since North Carolina was settled. … It bows to the traditions of abstraction, while also striving to clearly represent the depth of my experience of nature.”

Jerry Goodnight credited Mickey Whitener Coe, HMA's second director, with encouraging him to continue with his art, beginning in college. “Mickey Coe is one of the greatest things that ever happened to me” he once said.

This undated oil is one of the works featured in the new HMA show (January 13 - March 11, 2018) "Playing with Light: Reflections from the Hickory Museum of Art Collection." Its painter, Samuel Colman, was a successful 19th century Hudson River School artist. He (read more).

A rotating exhibit of recent new acquisitions will be displayed in HMA's second floor Windows and Objects galleries through the rest of 2017 and continuing until July 15th 2018. Here's a sampling.

On November 18th, 2017, at the conclusion of a day of "Light up the Season" pre-holiday events, Evelyn De Morgan's oil painting The Undiscovered Country was unveiled for HMA dignitaries and visitors. The work will be displayed at HMA throughout 2018. (read more)

“I pull inspiration for my work from my life. Most of my subjects tend to be self portraits but some are visitors representing an emotion, feeling, vice or real people. I use my art to navigate my life and often find putting the pen to the wood is like ... (more here)

Eig says that "If my paintings 'speak' to people that view it, and bring good feelings to their hearts, sometimes a smile on their lips, then I am very happy." She was educated as an economist and discovered art by chance when she was nineteen. She (more here)

Between September 16, 2007 and February 25, 2018, HMA's exhibition Endangered: a Joel Sartore Retrospective will showcase Sartore's environmental passion with an installation of fifty-five gorgeous examples of his animal photography. This artwork illustrates both the beauty and the tragedy of animal species threatened by extinction. (More here)

At its last meeting of the Museum's 2016/2017 year of art, the Acquisitions Committee was pleased to accept the gift of a painting from Helgi and Buck Shuford in honor of John and Sally Ross. The painting,  In a Summer Garden by Hobson Pittman, was (more here)

At HMA's Annual Meeting on June 22, 2017, Walter Griffin's 1911 Autumn Poplars, Boigneville (pictured) was one of three paintings displayed to illustrate how the threads of connections from Paul Whitener still move through HMA's collection, reaching though Paul's own 1959 Autumn Leaves to the (more)

"George Pearse Ennis is one of those men, alert and zestful but not officious in their energies who add to the satisfaction we take in living in our own times." Accomplished in many mediums, Ennis turned down an appointment to West Point in favor of becoming an artist.

Most recently, former Board member and current Honorary Trustee Josephine Hambrick donated to HMA the lovely portrait that Paul Whitener painted of her as a young girl in 1938, and the Acquisitions Committee was delighted to accept this gift. Paul of course was the Museum's founder, and (more)