Clevester Woods’ home studio on Danville’s Stonymill School Road is where he keeps a perpetually incomplete landscape painting that serves as a sort of whetstone for his skills. Whenever a project requires him to brush up on his talents as an artist, he returns to that landscape painting, adding, subtracting, blending colors.
In the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s unveiling of his new piece at Martinsville’s Fayette Area Historical Initiative, he revisited that familiar landscape painting in preparation for what he describes as a uniquely important painting.
“It’s been a long time coming. It’s taken me a while to even start it and it’s been a journey so far,” Woods said. “It’s pushed me to places I’ve never been before, artistically.”
The piece will be put on display at the FAHI Museum as part of its participation in the nationwide America 250 celebration, a commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the United States. Organizations across the country are finding their own way to participate in the milestone. Officials at the FAHI museum commissioned Woods for a portrait that commemorates the country using local figures.
“You hear about the Buffalo Soldiers, you hear about the Tuskegee Airmen, you hear about the doctors,” Charisse Hairston, executive director of FAHI, said. “A lot of people don’t know that some of them came from this area.”
Woods’ landscape oil painting, measuring about 36×48 inches, is expected to depict prominent military figures with ties to the Martinsville-Henry County region.
“You’re talking about four Black soldiers that have done so much for our history,” Woods said. “Just trying to put these individuals into one space … to me is monumental.”
The figures — Dr. Dana Baldwin, an entrepreneur who played a significant role in establishing Fayette Street; Sgt. Floyd J. Hairston, a Buffalo Soldier from the Martinsville area; Tuskegee Airman Lt. Colonel Armour McDaniel; and Gen. Dennis Via, a retired four-star general and Martinsville native — are four soldiers who signify Black Americans’ impact on the country as a whole.
“We’re honoring the prestige of the African Americans … that have contributed to the country over the past 250 years,” Hairston said. “We honor all of our military but this is just to show the prestige in the military that we have.”
Woods’ Danville home is filled with paintings of historical Black figures like Michelle Obama and other works he has collected over his decades as an artist. He said, for a time, that he fell out of the practice only to rediscover it as an adult.
Since picking the brush up again, Woods has amassed a large enough name for himself to have been invited to FAHI’s most recent Juneteenth celebration, where he presented paintings to the event’s hosts. Hairston and other officials were so impressed with his work that they wanted him to take part in their America 250 celebration.
This marks his first time doing a commissioned piece.
“I’ve shown my work at some galleries,” Woods said. “I have some things coming up in the near future, to display my work but not commissioned. Commissioned is taking on what someone else wants to see on the canvas. You’re trying to duplicate what they want on the canvas.”
Woods said he knows that lots of eyes will be on the piece, and he wants to make sure it will resonate with future generations.
“Even after I’m dead and gone they are going to look at this piece and question every aspect of it,” Woods said.
The exhibit will be unveiled at 4 p.m. Tuesday at the FAHI Museum and will become a permanent part of FAHI’s collection.
