Simmie Knox

A Presidential portraitist at the pinnacle of his profession

by Theodore Carter

Silver Spring artist Simmie Knox had painted dignitaries before–Supreme Court judges, governors, writers, and famous performers–but he never thought that his 40-plus years of painting would lead him to a seat next to President Clinton in the Oval Office. It was late 2001, the end of the president’s second term, and Knox was trying to earn a commission as the official portraitist of President and Mrs. Clinton.

"Of course I was nervous," laughs Knox, "I’m just a farm boy from Alabama."

The Oval Office’s brilliant blue drapes, carved presidential desk, and busts of Lincoln, Kennedy, and Roosevelt left Knox awestruck.

"It’s a place that I’ve read about for years, I’ve seen pictures on television and in the newspaper and suddenly I was there."

It wasn’t until after a few minutes of watching Clinton flip through photos of paintings of Justice Ruth Ginsberg, Hank Aaron, and Thurgood Marshall that Knox was put at ease by President Clinton.

"He said to me, ‘You know, a lot of the people you’ve painted are friends of mine.’ That’s when I knew I was all right," says Knox.

Knox’s portraits of President and Mrs. Clinton were unveiled June14 during a White House ceremony hosted by President George W. Bush and Laura Bush. The portraits show President Clinton in an easy, natural pose standing in front of the American flag in the oval office. Mrs. Clinton is depicted much differently than the other first ladies adorning the White House walls.

"She is the only one wearing a pantsuit, and showing a broad smile like that," says Knox.

With the official unveiling, Knox became the only African American to have painted an official portrait of the President. The farm boy had become a part of Presidential history, prompting Bill Clinton to say of Knox, "he, too, is a great American story."

Knox, the son of a sharecropper, was born in 1935. He grew up in Aliceville, Ala. and spent more time working on the farm than he did at school. It wasn’t until his father moved him to Mobile, at the age of 11, that he was able to attend school regularly. In Mobile, he began to draw and discovered his artistic talent while drawing super heroes with his classmates.

"We always wanted to see who could draw Superman the best, or Batman the best," he says.

With his recently unveiled portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Clinton, Simmie Knox became the first African American Presidential portraitist—and the first to depict a First Lady in a pantsuit.

Knox wanted to go to Alabama State Teacher’s College after graduating high school in 1956, but couldn’t afford the $5 registration fee. He joined the Army in order to earn money for his education.

After the Army, he moved to Milford, Del., where he worked in a textile factory. Knox still harbored dreams of going to college to study art–as evidenced by the self- portrait Knox keeps in his Silver Spring studio, painted when he was 28. "I did this without any formal training," he says, pointing at his drawing of himself with a proud, upturned chin.

That self-portrait was his entire portfolio when he applied and was admitted to Temple University’s Tyler School of Art. Despite his interest in figure drawing, his education took him another direction.

"I learned about design, texture, shape, color, light…[but] it was the time of Jackson Pollock," he says, explaining how he was pushed away from realistic renditions of his subjects and into an abstract style.

Knox came to Washington in the early 1970s as a painter of mammoth abstract-expressionistic paintings. His paintings, some bigger than he, were displayed in the Jacob’s Ladder Gallery on Wisconsin Avenue. Others are still on display in The Kreeger Museum on Foxhall Road.

Although successful as an abstract painter, Knox wanted to go back to painting the human face. He realized that he "had an ability to capture likeness that very few people had," a skill left over from his informal training as an illustrator of super heroes.

In 1975, Knox boldly announced his return to realism with an enormous portrait of Frederick Douglass, a painting now owned by the Smithsonian.

A few years later, he was commissioned by the state of Tennessee to paint writer Alex Haley. Knox considers the Haley portrait another one of his cornerstone pieces, not only because of its merit, but also because of the difficulty he had in completing the project.

"They rejected it; told me it was too big," he says.

Accustomed to working on gigantic abstract paintings, Knox’s portraits were done on a grand scale, some as large as 12 feet high. He had been using second-rate canvases, too, stretching them himself and nailing them into their wooden framework.

"It was the best thing that ever happened to me," Knox says.

He quickly learned to buy only first-rate materials and to work on a smaller scale. His second Haley portrait now hangs in the Tennessee State House.

Although by the early 1980s Knox had established himself as a successful painter, he still had difficulty making ends meet as a full-time artist. He, his wife, and their two small children lived in a two-bedroom apartment in Adams-Morgan. One of the bedrooms doubled as Knox’s studio. Knox started painting still lifes and hauled them down to sell in Eastern Market.

"I liked it there because you could get a whole booth for ten dollars," he says.

Financial security didn’t come until later, when he was introduced to a person who would become a benefactor.

"I owe a lot to this man," says Knox pointing at his own rendition of the world-recognized face of Bill Cosby.

Cosby, a serious art collector, found Knox by way of his Frederick Douglass painting. Cosby collection curator David Driskell had seen the painting on display at the Museum of African Art and recognized Knox’s talent. Driskell knew that if allowed to concentrate on art instead of sales, Knox would flourish. Cosby immediately hired him to paint several portraits.

"He sent me to New York, France, Arizona," says Knox.

With Cosby’s backing, Knox was able to build a client base. He stopped going to Eastern Market and moved into a house in Silver Spring.

Now, he has "a great commute," painting out of his home studio–a converted garage filled with stacks of paintings leaning against every wall. The biggest canvases stretch to the ceiling. Jazz plays in the background on a small radio engulfed in piles of CDs from the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, and Curtis Mayfield. The garage workbench is filled with Plexiglas paint palettes stacked above one another with dixie-cup pillars. Propped on a tabletop amidst the tools of his trade sits a framed photograph of Knox with President Clinton inscribed, "With appreciation for your fine work."

In another corner of his studio are nearly a dozen African masks. Pointing toward them, Knox explains how African art influenced cubists like Picasso.

"It’s amazing what can be done just with the human face," he says.

From humble beginnings, Knox gained commissions primarily through word-of-mouth and has painted famous faces ranging from former New York Mayor David Dinkins to Muhammad Ali. Knox’s portrait of former Alabama Governor Don Seigelman hangs in the Alabama State House, a building Knox wasn’t allowed to enter while growing up in Alabama.

"That painting hangs opposite the painting of George C. Wallace," Knox says with satisfaction. (Wallace, a staunch segregationist, gained national notoriety in 1964 during an unsuccessful bid for the presidency.)

But it was Knox’s reputation within the judicial world that eventual earned him the distinction of presidential portraitist.

"They used to call me the artist of the judges," he says.

In 1989, Knox was commissioned to paint Spottswood Robinson, Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and an important civil rights leader. Robinson later recommended Knox to his friend Thurgood Marshall. His portrait of Marshall now hangs in the Supreme Court building.

During the unveiling of the Robinson painting, Knox gave his business card to Ruth Ginsberg, then a District Court Judge serving alongside Robinson. In 1993, president Clinton appointed Judge Ginsberg to her current spot on the United States Supreme Court. When it was time for Ginsberg to be immortalized in portraiture, she called Knox.

"She told me, ‘I’ve had your card in a special spot for nine years,’" he says.

Not long afterwards, during a party celebrating freshman senators including Hillary Rodham Clinton, Ginsberg recommended Knox to the famous first couple. Word-of-mouth recommendations had landed Knox a portraitist’s dream job: painting the President and First Lady.

Now basking in the afterglow of his high-profile portraits of the Clintons, Knox is fielding calls from People magazine and ABC World News Tonight. Shell-shocked by the blitz of media attention, Knox can hardly believe his own success story. The only explanation he offers is this: "I’ve been doing this same thing for 40 years."

Bill Clinton’s explanation affords more honor to the humble presidential portraitist. He said that Knox represents "part of America’s promise–that people should rise as far as they can and do whatever their dreams indicate, if they’re good enough to do it."