Don Cincone, a renowned black artist who grew up in the Monroe area, was a featured speaker during African American Heritage Week.
Jesse Flunder brought Cincone in to discuss how he made it as a black artist in a time of racial tension.
“I chose Don Cincone because I was very taken by his art, especially the one with the woman and the banjo,” said Flunder, a secondary education major.
Cincone was born in a sharecroppers shack in Alto, La.
He said he doesn’t remember when he started school because in those days all able hands had to pick the cotton for the harvest.
Cincone recalled the days he spent in that one-room school house.
“I remember drawing, drama and singing were all intermingled with math, history and reading,” he said.
It was there where he learned “negro spirituals” that he keeps with him today.
At age seven, Cincone moved with his family to Monroe, where he attended Carroll High school.
He would later attend Southern University where he received a Bachelors degree in Arts.
When he graduated, he asked the department head what he should do after graduation. He was told that he could teach art, but that did not satisfy him.
He went overseas and explored Europe, spent some time in New York, got married and went to California where he attended San Francisco School of Fashion Design.
When trying to make a career in fashion design in California, he was racially discriminated against. He was told that his kind was not allowed to be fashion designers there. Instead of giving up, he went back to his first love, art.
Because of so many requests, Don Cincone began teaching art in 1966 and continued until 1993. Universal Studios also assigned him to create 85 original paintings for the movie “Art of Love.”
“Art is the paradigm of all other disciplines. If you can manipulate anything that will create a mark, you can draw,” Cincone said.
“I don’t have to say the words, but I express the feelings through the colors,” said Cincone. “I paint to rid myself of the pain.”
Interested parties can find Cincone’s artwork in the Northeast Louisiana Delta African American Heritage Museum.
