Charles McGee is a famous Detroit artist, who has both the Student Center and Ford gallery filled with his life’s work. McGee is an important artist who has influenced Michigan’s art over the years.
Born in 1924, McGee spent most of his childhood helping his grandfather as a sharecropper. Then in the 1930s he moved out of the south, like many African Americans did at that time, and attended school in the north.
“I attended George Washington Elementary School, Cleveland Intermediate and I studied at the Center for Creative Studies which use to be called Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts,” McGee said.
“Helping my grandfather, sharecrop I didn’t know what education was, I didn’t think I was missing anything,” he said. “I came up here to Detroit and signed an X in my first class because I had never been inside of a school, so I had mountains to climb but I was determined I would survive it and I did!
“What it did was set me on a track different from the normal process,” McGee said. “It made me stand up and solve problems.”
When asked how his art was particularly influenced by his experiences in school McGee said, “Everything that one does influences a person.
“You can’t detach yourself from your experiences because you learn as you go. For example, there was a student named George in elementary school that influenced me quite a bit because he was getting the teacher’s favors and I thought that I could do that, and so I decided I was going to do art, and that is where it first started.”
McGee said he believes nature plays a big part in all our lives and people have callings. His just so happened to be art, that’s why he does it and that knowledge has played a big role in his success.
“There is no way I could be who I am if I didn’t take some clues from the way life is ordered,” he said. “For example, night and day, life and death. All of these opposites is what life is conceived out of. Even the way the organs in our bodies are constructed.
“I express all these things in the work that I do and it has so far brought me to a place in life where I really respect the world around me and all of those I come in contact with and as a consequence I find peace.”
McGee’s favorite piece in his own collection of works is named “The Next One Always,” because it is out performing its mission in the world.
He said that he strives for perfection and even if he will never achieve the fact that he “stands in line and waits for it everyday, looks and reaches for it” is what keeps him going.
McGee’s describes his art as “humility, equality and never being satisfied.”
“I think it is important that we keep pressing on and looking for the new,” he said.
McGee said he constantly strives to improve himself and is always seeking to understand the “intelligence manifested in nature’s order.”
“Most people don’t stop to think about what order we live in. They are just out there in time. Treat people the way you wanted to be treated. That’s what it’s about.”
