A six-week exhibition of award-winning sports artist Steve Skipper’s paintings will be on display in the Homewood City Hall from April 19 through May 30.
The exhibit, sponsored by the Homewood Arts Council, will be on display and open to the public in the city hall’s first-floor exhibition corridor from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Fridays during that period.
Skipper, who grew up in the Rosedale neighborhood, said the exhibit being shown is called the Coming Home Collection. He said it “will be representative of my work over the decades that reflect my passionate interests in American sports, civil right commemoratives and Christian art.”
Skipper is highly lauded for his work, most recently becoming the first Black artist to be formally commissioned by Buckingham Palace. He’ll be doing a painting of Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Anne, according to a statement from the council.
“It’s been quite a ride with Christ doing all the driving and a man with miles yet to go,” Skipper said in response.
He also was the first Black artist to do sanctioned and officially licensed sports paintings for the University of Alabama, Auburn University, Dallas Cowboys, NASCAR, Professional Bull Riders, the PGA and Green Bay Packers, among others.
He was named by the U.S. Sports Academy among the 2023 Sports Artists of the Year. In 2011, he was selected to participate in an exhibition at the National Art Museum of Sports in Indianapolis, when he was named one of the Top 50 sports artists in the world. He also has a long list of commissions from sports figures, but that isn’t his only work.
He has been acclaimed for his commemorative civil rights paintings, including having been commissioned by the city of Birmingham to do commemorative artwork celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Movement. He’s also painted a commemorative for the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday and the Edmund Pettus Bridge, of which the first reproduction hangs in the LBJ Presidential Library.
A documentary about Skipper, “Colors of Character,” details his struggles as a young man in Homewood who later became a heralded artist.
Skipper credits his fourth grade teacher at Rosedale Elementary for first seeing his promise and encouraging him in art and so has dedicated the Coming Home Collection as a ‘Tribute to Vernell Saunders.’
“I believe Stever Skipper’s Coming Home Collection exhibition at City Hall will be one of the council’s most important, high-profile events ever,” Amber Allen-Parsons, Arts Council chair, said.
An opening reception during which residents can meet Skipper and view his work will be held April 18, 5:30-7:30 p.m., Allen-Parsons said.
