Claude Lawrence

Claude Lawrence (born 1944) is an American jazz tenor saxophonist and self-taught abstract artist. Beginning in the 1960s he had a successful career as a jazz musician before switching his focus to painting full-time in 1986. His art is held in the permanent collections of over 40 museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Parrish Art Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Lawrence’s art has been described as expressing the rhythms and improvisation of jazz. His compositions, which frequently use bold colors and dynamic brushstrokes, are abstract while often approaching the figurative. Lawrence has stated, "I build a dialogue with each painting. It speaks to me, it tells me where it wants to go, and when it gets there, it’s born. It’s done."

Early life Born in 1944, Lawrence began playing tenor saxophone at age 14. He attended a vocational high school for commercial art and instrumental music, where he was classmates with fellow musicians Frederick J. Brown, Anthony Braxton and Jack DeJohnette.

Career Jazz After graduating high school, Lawrence formed The Claude Lawrence Trio and began playing jazz in Chicago clubs. He would also play in groups with members from the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. To make ends meet, he worked a number of jobs, including as a bus driver, taxi driver, construction worker and mail carrier. Throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, Lawrence continued playing jazz in New York and throughout the country. He also recorded an album with the Last Poets. Over the next three decades, he spent long stretches of time living and working in Sag Harbor, New York, a seaside community on Long Island with a history as a Black cultural enclave.

Lawrence’s first solo exhibition was held at the Gerald Peters Gallery in New York in March 2015. In 2016 Lawrence’s work was featured in “Modern Heroics: 75 Years of African-American Expressionism” at the Newark Museum. Other art galleries that have exhibited his work include Anthony Meier in San Francisco, the LAB in Seattle, the Keyes Gallery in Sag Harbor and Aaron Payne Fine Art in Santa Fe. National Gallery of Art American Folk Art Museum Detroit Institute of Arts Philadelphia Museum of Art Baker Museum New Orleans Museum of Art Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture Guild Hall of East Hampton Nasher Museum of Art Westover School Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Portland Museum of Art Colby College Museum of Art Long Island Museum of American Art, History, and Carriages High Museum of Art Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art