“Backwoods Pines”
oil on canvas panel
16 x 12 in.
© date unknown, circa 1970
Alfred Hair, nicknamed “Freddie,” was born May 20, 1941, in Fort Pierce, Florida, and was killed at the age of twenty-nine in a barroom brawl in 1970.
Alfred Warner Hair was born in Fort Pierce, Florida in 1941. His parents were Annie Mae and Sammy Hair Sr. Alfred Hair married Doretha in 1966. He had six children. Alfred Hair attended Lincoln Park High and Lincoln Park Community College. Hair had natural artistic talent which manifested itself in art class at Lincoln Park High where he studied under art teacher Zenobia Jefferson. She sent him to study art with A.E. Backus.
Hair saw painting as liberation for young African- Americans, from being confined to fruit picking and other forms of hard manual labor. Hair knew he could never make a living on his paintings the same way white artists could because he was in the Deep South during the Jim Crow era, so Hair resolved to work fast and in quantity.