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Wilbert Griffith
1920 – 2005
Born in Bridgetown, Barbados on August 29, 1920, Wilbert Griffith left school at age 13. He worked in a bakery, married and had seven children. He came to the United States in 1966 and worked as a machinist helper in Emeryville, California. In 1995 (thirteen years after his retirement) he bought some marking pens and began to draw "to pass the time."
Griffith, a self-taught artist, paints while sitting in his living room chair. He uses oil paint on canvasboard, working both with brush and finger. His colors are tropical, with greens, browns, reds and yellows as his primary palette. He likes to paint “...blacks more in today’s society than going back to slave days.”
Most of Griffith’s images include figures, usually groups of women, but he does not use a model. His people emerge from magazines, cast-off library books, and journals, and join together on the canvas in a harmony of color and culture.
Griffith’s walls at home are covered with his paintings. A few have been set into simple wood frames, but most have painted borders that surround the image. Each is carefully numbered, titled and signed, often on both the front and back. They are then suspended from carefully threaded hangers.
Modest about his talent and his recent success, Griffith insists that painting is just a pastime, because “the hours go real fast when you sit down there with a brush.” Griffith’s paintings found an enthusiastic audience at New York’s Outsider Art Fair 2000, and his images are now included in some very prominent collections.
Wilbert died in Northern California on August 29, 2005, on his 85th birthday. We at The Ames Gallery will truly miss this gentle and unassuming man.
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