In conjunction with Black History Month, and the City of Fort Pierce’s Highwaymen Heritage Trail Festival, Fort Pierce Westwood Academy celebrated Highwaymen Week. The Highwaymen were discussed school-wide and to honor their legacy, Ms. Hoots’ Drawing 1 classes researched and executed a series of Highwaymen murals.
Drawing 1 students covered a full spectrum of Highwaymen history to better understand who they are and why they are so important to the community. These students discussed the primordial Florida landscapes that the Highwaymen painted and the 13 categories that they fall into: Royal Poinciana, Ocean Shore, Breaking Waves, Fire Skies, Indian River, St. Lucie and inland Rivers, Backcountry, Backcountry Pines, Rivers of Grass, People, Stormy Weather, Moonlight on the Water, and Orange Groves.
Students were then tasked with reproducing a Highwaymen work that represented each category. Art plagiarism, and the importance of crediting the original artist that you are paying homage to, was stressed along the way. Drawing 1 students split into teams across 5 class periods to produce multiple sketches and color studies of the work they were reproducing. Once they felt confident in the composition and color mixing, groups moved outside and began to translate their preliminary sketch onto 4×8 feet sheets of pressure-treated plywood. Through perseverance and teamwork, the results are stunning and are now on view in the halls of Fort Pierce Westwood Academy.
