Capturing The African American Experience Through Illustrations
In a twist of fate, Nelson broke his finger just before the start of basketball season his senior year. “I really wasn’t good enough to play basketball professionally,” admitted Nelson. “I didn’t put as much time and effort into it as I did with my art.”
While he was fortunate to have the support and encouragement of his family to pursue his passion for art, Nelson still couldn’t shake the infamous cliché that artists are not able to support themselves with their work, i.e. the starving artist lifestyle. “I heard that a lot so I got a scholarship to Pratt Institute to study architecture,” he said. “I felt I would get a real job and do my artwork on the side.”
Just like basketball, architecture wasn’t his forte and Nelson changed his major to illustration.
After graduating, Nelson received calls from Sports Illustrated and Dreamworks Studios. The film studio was searching for an African American artist to paint images of slavery so Steven Spielberg could review it for a movie he would be directing. That movie turned out to be 1997’s Amistad, the historical drama based on the true story of a slave mutiny that took place abroad a ship of the same name in 1839.
“It was a lot of build up, it didn’t just fall out of the sky,” said Nelson. “I was really fortunate to have those two [jobs] because I had just gotten married and my daughter was on the way.”
After working with Dreamworks, one would think Nelson’s career continued to skyrocket. But it came to a halt. For six months, he got no offers. “That was tough because I thought since I worked on a Steven Spielberg movie that my phone would be ringing off the hook.”
Eventually, he received another call from Dreamworks and was recruited to serve as the lead conceptual artist for the animated feature, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron.
In 1999, Nelson began collaborating with several authors for a series of illustrated books, including Ntozake Shange’s Coretta Scott King, and Spike and Tonya Lee’s Please, Baby, Please. He became a New York Times best-selling author in 2008 when he released his debut, We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball. He’s also worked with the United States Postal Service—this year, the postal service issued 44-cent Negro League Baseball commemorative stamps in two designs, including an illustration of Andrew “Rube” Foster.
Coming up, Nelson is working on a series of paintings for Coca-Cola for their Black History Month promotion and the Essence Music Festival. His biggest project is his upcoming book called Heart and Soul about the relationship between Americans and African Americans. “It tells the story of America through the eyes of an old African American woman,” explained Nelson.
Even though his work tends to focus on African American subject matter, it is more important to him that he is recognized as an artist first. “I think people look at it a little differently as being less than and that’s not really a positive thing,” he said. “I focus on creating great art.”
