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Never-Nervous-Purvis. A conversation with one of Miami's best known artists. |
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Written by Steve Mayo
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Page 1 of 2 He's homeless...He's an ex-con...He's illiterate...He's an outsider artist. Those are among the elements that have helped build the icon most people know as Purvis Young. But ask the man to describe himself and none of these things come up. “I’m a painter,” he says. In a recent conversation Purvis Young commented on his art, his view of the world’s problems, his life after a kidney transplant earlier this year and his current legal battle with a former business manager.
 Purvis Young working at his studio
Purvis Young: I grew up watching segregation in Miami during the Martin Luther King marches in Alabama. I see it here and put it in my art. I meet people from Europe and different countries and they say they didn’t know America was like this, you know? That’s the first thing they tell me sometimes. They didn’t know this kind stuff goes on. So I have to put it in my artwork.
Born in 1943 in Miami’s Liberty City, Young grew up in an Overtown different from what’s now left after the 1960s construction of Interstate 95 that ripped apart a thriving community. What was left after the freeway was built, an urban renewal project in the 1970s wiped out, leaving the despair Young’s angels provide hope for in his art.
As much as a town, or in this case a neighborhood can influence, Overtown is part of the artist and continues to influence Young’s work whether recording its history or harnessing its hope on canvas, cardboard, plywood, a campaign sign or anything else he finds to paint on.
SM: What do you want people to understand about your art?
PY: I express my feelings through my art. I try to let people know through the characters that everything is not so lovely. In Overtown they always tell us we’re going to heaven. Even though we see the dope and everything else, we’re still going to heaven. My feeling was things are gonna get better in the world.
SM: Have they gotten better?
PY: I don’t know. You see the trouble in the world now. The rich get richer and the poor stay poor. War and everything. It’s still problems and stuff. I just paint angels trying to make it better, trying to help people.
SM: Do you see yourself as one of those angels?
PY: I paint these problems. I tell my friends I can’t solve the world’s problems. I have to paint these things. How I feel, you know?
SM: You received your kidney transplant earlier this year, what’s next for you and your art?
PY: You know I got this lawsuit? I want to give the guy a break. But I kept asking the guy about my money. His name is Martin Siskind. I kept asking about my money and he kept giving me the runaround. So I filed a lawsuit. But I keep working on the things that come to my mind.
I’ll keep doing the same thing like I been doing. I like to paint wild horses, they represent freedom.
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