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George Hunt
Memphis artist George Hunt was born in rural Louisiana, near Lake Charles, and his grandmother noted early in life that
he had a special power to "see things." He spent his childhood in Texas and Arkansas, then, on a football scholarship, he
attended the University of Arkansas where he was encouraged to study art as a career. He taught art education and coached High School football in Memphis before devoting himself to painting full-time. He now works in a studio
overlooking world-famous Beale Street.
Much of the artist’s work draws upon the Southern African-American experience, particularly folk traditions, the civil rights movement, the mythic heroism of Black manhood and, of course, the blues.
Hunt has won a number of significant commissions. In 1996 he was commissioned to paint 24 portraits for the Blues & Legends Hall of Fame Museum in Robinsonville, Mississippi. He was selected as the featured artist for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Museum’s American Music Master’s annual conference in 1998 and again in 2000. In 1997 he was commissioned to create an original painting commemorating the 40th anniversary of the "Little Rock Nine" at Central High School in Arkansas. The painting, which will ultimately hang in a museum being built to showcase this pivotal civil rights act, was hanging for four years in a conference room in the White House in Washington, D.C.
The artist’s work has been exhibited in numerous exhibitions nationally, and is part of the permanent collections of museums as well private
collectors such as Anthony Quinn and Eddie Murphy.
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