Bayou Woman

Bayou Woman returns to the Louisiana landscape that shaped Samella Lewis’s earliest sense of place. The seated figure is not isolated from the setting: the same ochres, blacks, and warm earth colors move through her clothing, the water, and the surrounding ground. Lewis makes the woman and the bayou part of a single remembered environment rather than treating the landscape as background.

The work is especially effective because it refuses a picturesque view of the South. Its compressed space, roughened surface, and closely related colors make memory feel layered and unsettled. The figure’s inward posture gives the image its psychological center while leaving her identity and thoughts open to the viewer.

Institutional context

Bayou Woman has appeared in coverage of the Samella S. Lewis Collection at The Kansas African American Museum, a collection formed through gifts Lewis made to the museum between 1998 and 2006. Its presence there connects the print to Lewis’s broader work as both an artist and a builder of Black cultural institutions.

Print and edition notes

This 2006 mixed-media print combines digital and serigraph processes to build its layered color and textured surface. It was issued in an edition of 60 with additional artist’s proofs.

Artist: Dr. Samella Lewis
Medium: Digital serigraph / mixed media print
Date: 2006
Dimensions: 20.5 × 23 in.
Edition: 60 plus artist’s proofs
Presentation: Unframed