Cynthia Hawkins (born January 29, 1950) is a painter and sculptor. In February 2023, Hawkins was awarded the Helen Frankenthaler Award for Painting.

Early life and education

Cynthia Hawkins was born to Elease Coger Hawkins and Robert D. Hawkins on January 29, 1950. Raised in Queens, New York, Hawkins is the eldest of 5 siblings. Her early fascination with prehistoric art would later manifest in a career as an artist. As a child, Hawkins spent time watching art instructor Jon Gnagy on the television program "Learn to Draw" and as a teenager, taught herself watercolor painting. After graduating from John Bowne High School in 1968, Hawkins took classes at the

Brooklyn Museum Art School The Brooklyn Museum Art School was a non-degree-granting professional school that opened at the Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn, New York in the summer of 1941. The Brooklyn Museum Art School provided instruction for amateur artists as well until Ja ...

and later the Provincetown Workshop. In 1969, she began taking Saturday drawing classes at the

Art Students League The Art Students League of New York is an art school in the American Fine Arts Society in Manhattan, New York City. The Arts Students League is known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists. Although artists may study f ...

and took classes part-time at

Queens College Queens College (QC) is a public college in the New York City borough of Queens. Part of the City University of New York system, Queens College occupies an campus primarily located in Flushing. Queens College was established in 1937 and offe ...

. By the early 1970s, Hawkins became a full time student and though she had considered pursuing several other career paths, she ultimately decided to study art. The first in her family to attend college, Hawkins graduated from

in 1977 with a B.A. in Studio Arts. Hawkins went on to receive three additional degrees after graduating college, including an M.F.A from the Mt. Royal Graduate School of Painting at the Maryland Institute, College of Art (1992), an M.A. in Museum Professions from

Seton Hall University Seton Hall University (SHU) is a Private university, private Catholic Church, Catholic research university in South Orange, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1856 by then-Bishop James Roosevelt Bayley and named after his aunt, Saint Elizab ...

(2008), and her Ph.D. in American Studies from the

University of Buffalo The State University of New York at Buffalo (commonly referred to as UB, University at Buffalo, and sometimes SUNY Buffalo) is a public university, public research university in Buffalo, New York, Buffalo and Amherst, New York, United States. ...

(2019) with a dissertation titled, “African American Agency and the Art Object, 1868-1917.” In addition to being an artist, Hawkins has served as an independent curator, Director of Galleries at

Cedar Crest College Cedar Crest College is a private liberal arts women's college in Allentown, Pennsylvania. In the fall of 2024, the college enrolled 886 undergraduate and 362 graduate students. Students of all genders can pursue degree programs through the Scho ...

, Gallery Director and Curator at State University of New York Geneseo, and is currently the Deputy Director at Kenkeleba House. She has also served as an Adjunct Instructor at

Northampton Community College Northampton Community College is a public community college in Pennsylvania with campuses in Bethlehem in Northampton County and Tannersville in Monroe County. The college, founded in 1967, also has satellite locations in the south side of B ...

, SUNY Rockland Community College, and

SUNY Geneseo The State University of New York College at Geneseo (SUNY Geneseo, Geneseo State College or, colloquially, "Geneseo") is a public liberal arts college in Geneseo (village), New York, Geneseo, New York (state), New York. It is New York's public ho ...

. Cynthia Hawkins currently resides in Rochester, New York with her husband John and their dog.

Career and style

Throughout the 1970s and 80s, Hawkins primarily produced abstract paintings and sculptures, exploring visual concepts based in geometry and astronomy. She produced paintings with hieroglyphical elements and polyethylene sculptures hung from the ceiling. In her early career, Hawkins frequented the

Museum of Modern Art, New York The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, and includes over 200,000 works of arc ...

and spent time exploring galleries on Madison Avenue where she met Linda Good Bryant and became involved with Just Above Midtown (JAM). Bryant introduced Hawkins to

David Hammons David Hammons (born July 24, 1943) is an American artist, best known for his works in and around New York City and Los Angeles during the 1970s and 1980s. Early life David Hammons was born in 1943 in Springfield, Illinois, the youngest of ten ...

and later Corrine Jennings and Joe Overstreet. In 1978, she exhibited in ''Summer Show: It’s a Crowd'' at JAM and had her own solo exhibition at the gallery by 1981. In 1985, Hawkins was invited to exhibit her work in the show ''Carnival: Ritual of Reversal'' at Kenkeleba House Gallery, a non-profit gallery founded by Jennings and Overstreet. Hawkins would go on to develop relationships with other artists at the center of the burgeoning black-owned gallery scene in 1970s/80s New York such as

Camille Billops Camille Josephine Billops (August 12, 1933 – June 1, 2019) was an African-American sculptor, filmmaker, archivist, printmaker, and educator. Early life and education Billops was born in Los Angeles, California, to parents Alma Gilmore, origi ...

Vivian E. Browne Vivian E. Browne (April 26, 1929–July 23, 1993) was an American artist. Born in Laurel, Florida, Browne was mostly known for her painting series called ''Little Men'' and her ''Africa'' series. She is also known for linking abstraction to na ...

, and Emma Amos and

Thelma Golden Thelma Golden (born September 22, 1965) is an American art curator, who is the Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City, United States. She is noted as one of the originators of the term post-blackness. From 20 ...

. By the late 1980s, Hawkins turned her focus towards creating large expressionistic paintings. Her series ''Currency of Meaning'' contains arrows, circles, and triangles which serve as a visual vocabulary replicated across the artist's oeuvre. Hawkins explored religion in the early 1990s before creating the ''Natural Things'' (1996), an evolution of work that began from the artist's examination of the shapes that emerge from the physical world. This led Hawkins to create ''Signs of Civilization'' in the early 2000s, a series in which the artist abstractly depicts naturally occurring forms and manmade incursions from 30,000 feet above. In 2019, Hawkins began to re-engage with her full practice and has since continued to use natural earthbound forms such as boulders and rocks to initiate paintings. These paintings, however, are not meant to be representational; rather, they are meant as reinterpretations of natural occurrences. In her current work, Hawkins continues to integrate her lifelong interest in themes centered around nature, the cosmos, science, and mark making while remaining invested in creating new kinds of color relationships. Hawkins has been an Artist in Residence at several institutions including the

Studio Museum in Harlem The Studio Museum in Harlem is an African-American art museum at 144 West 125th Street in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, United States. Founded in 1968, the museum collects, preserves and interprets art created by African A ...

in 1987, the

Virginia Center for the Creative Arts The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA) is a residential artist community in Amherst, Virginia, USA. Since 1971, VCCA has offered residencies of varying lengths with flexible scheduling for international artists, writers, and composers at ...

in 1996, the Experimental Printmaking Institute at

Lafayette College Lafayette College is a private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Easton, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1826 by James Madison Porter and other citizens in Easton, the college first held classes in 18 ...

in 2005, and the Butterfly House in Le Grange, Georgia in 2014. Most recently, Hawkins was included in the survey exhibition ''Just Above Midtown: 1974 to Present'' at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2022), ''The Inseparables'' at STARS Gallery, Los Angeles (2023), ''So let us all be citizens too at'' David Zwirner, London (2023), Art Basel: Kaufmann Repetto Gallery Group Exhibition, Milan (2023), and Hollybush Gardens Gallery, London (2023).

Exhibitions

Hawkins’ solo exhibitions include ''Natural Things, 1996–99'', STARS, Los Angeles (2022); ''Clusters: Stellar and Earthly'', Buffalo Science Museum, Buffalo (2009); ''New Works: The Currency of Meaning'',

Cinque Gallery The Cinque Gallery (1969–2004) was co-founded by artists Romare Bearden, Ernest Crichlow, and Norman Lewis as an outgrowth of the Black power movement to "provide a place where the works of unknown, and neglected artists of talent …" — p ...

, New York (1989); and ''Cynthia Hawkins'', Just Above Midtown/Downtown Gallery, New York (1981). She exhibited in ''Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces,'' at the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

. Her work is in numerous public collections, including The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York; Kenkeleba Gallery, New York; Th
La Grange Art Museum
La Grange, Georgia; and the Department of State, Washington, D.C. She has received the

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum in the New York City borough (New York City), borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 500,000 objects. Located near the Prospect Heig ...

Art School Scholarship, The Herbert and Irene Wheeler Grant and th
Black Metropolis Research Consortium
Fellowship. She is represented by

Paula Cooper Gallery The Paula Cooper Gallery is an art gallery in New York City, founded in 1968 by . History Predecessors Cooper ran her own space, the Paula Johnson Gallery, from 1964 to 1966, where Walter De Maria launched his first solo show in New York. She w ...

Awards

• Black Metropolis Research Consortium Fellowship, 2009 • Rockland Community College Award for Artistic Excellence, 1996 • The Herbert and Irene Wheeler Grant, 1995 • Rockland Community College Award for Artistic Excellence, 1995, 1994 • Patricia Roberts Harris Fellowship, United States Department of Education (Full Academic Fellowship) 1990-1992 • Atlanta Life Insurance Company, Exhibition and Competition, Atlanta, GA (2nd place Mixed Media 1984) • Brooklyn Museum Art School Scholarship, Brooklyn, NY (Watercolor 1972) • Provincetown Workshop Scholarship, Provincetown, MA (Painting 1975)

Selected catalog essays

• "Historicizing African American Abstraction, Printmaking, and Activism in 1960s and 1970s New York City" • "Extending the Notion of Activism in Wes and Missy Collection of African American Prints and Works on Paper"

References

Living people 1950 births American artists American women artists American sculptors Artists from Queens, New York {{Improve categories, date=February 2024 American women painters