Pictured: Beck Lane's design for a mural honoring the Florida Highwaymen includes a portrait of member Alfred Hair. Photo by the artist.

The Sarasota public art scene continues to grow, with the imminent addition of a large-scale mural made in tribute to the famous Florida Highwaymen, a group of 26 African American landscape artists who created their own style and their own art scene at a time when white galleries and institutions were often closed to them. The project, designed and spearheaded by artist Beck Lane, who is joined by fellow artists Greg Cruz and Jade Griffin, will span three 13’ x 13’ panels on the eastern wall of the Whole Foods in Downtown Sarasota. Painting begins late August.

Active from the mid-1950s through the 1980s, the Florida Highwaymen carved a niche for themselves in the southwest Florida art world through ingenuity and determination, painting impressionistic landscapes on construction materials like fiberboard and Masonite and painting them quickly, selling them door-to-door or roadside from the trunk of their cars—a practice which would one day give them their name. “It’s absolutely astounding what they were able to accomplish,” says Lane. “And they were doing this out on the highways of Florida during the Jim Crow era.”

The planned design for the new mural, which Lane has been reworking and revising for nearly a year, pays homage to the Florida Highwaymen and their story through both style and content. Looming large in the design are portraits of both Alfred Hair, the youngest of the group and a leader until his death at age 29, and Mary Ann Carroll, the lone woman in the group and also one of the nine original members. Behind them, the burnt-orange clouds and vibrant blue skies speak to the impressionistic style found in so much of the Highwaymen’s work. “There are endless nods,” Lane says.

For Cruz, the project represents an opportunity to pay tribute to a group of artists who were “almost like folklore” for a young person of color making his way in the art world. “It was just so cool to learn about artists who looked like me,” he says, “and who had such a large contribution to the community.” It’s a tribute that will be crafted in many layers, using everything from acrylic handpaint and regular housepaint to spray paint and more. “That’s the way you get the proper texture and the proper tones,” he says, so that the finished product will present well in any light and withstand the Florida weather. It is, after all, public art.

“And public art is important,” says Griffin, a Fort Myers-based painter also joining the effort. “When you drive through Florida cities that don’t accentuate the arts, it’s dull and bland,” she says. “But if you go through places like Sarasota, where art is living and creativity is everywhere, it’s a different feeling.” And when that public art can also draw attention to a group like the Florida Highwaymen, it becomes something even more. “It’s historic,” Griffin says. “It says that black artists have a place in the Sarasota arts scene and we’re bettering the community we’re in.”

Pictured: Beck Lane's design for a mural honoring the Florida Highwaymen includes a portrait of member Alfred Hair. Photo by the artist.