19 BIOGRAPHY
The train, one of several “journeying things,” recurs in Bearden’s work—a memory from the artist’s youth in rural North Carolina and a symbol of the Underground Railroad and the northern migration of African Americans from the South during the early part of the twentieth century. Bearden often worked in a variety of collage media and then added graphite, charcoal, spray paint, watercolor, oil, and more. This section was probably spray painted. A cabin in the woods—more Mecklenburg memories A lush landscape made from magazine cuttings Bearden studied art history, visited museums, and collected reproductions of famous works of art. This piece of collage is a cutting from a reproduction of Henri Rousseau’s painting, The Dream, 1910, in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Birds and barnyard fowl appear often. The female figure in profile holding a watermelon wears a traditional early twentieth-century farm costume with a long skirt and head scarf. The rustic wooden fence, a recurring farm motif, helps divide space.
slide 3 Tomorrow I May Be Far Away, 1966/1967, collage of various papers with charcoal and graphite on canvas, 46 x 56 in. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Paul Mellon Fund