Milly Buchanan | painter Milly Buchanan was born in Monrovia, Liberia in 1944
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to a German-Jamaican immigrant and a Liberian of Americo-Liberian descent. Milly's artistry began in Vevey, Switzerland, where her talent was first noticed, at the age of 10, by a prominent Swiss artist, Guy Baer, who tutored a young Milly once a week for nearly a year, imparting his classical technique in oil painting, which still characterizes her work today.
er early work, mostly still-life, landscapes, and portraits, clearly followed the great European Masters of the 15th century, but Milly developed her personal style, called Afro-Cubism, in the late 60s. Reminiscent of Picasso, Braque and Modigliani, Afro-Cubism was her shattered-glass art expression of the sociopolitical turmoil in Liberia. The artistic epiphany occurred when a large mirror was shattered, and in the mirror's reflection was an ebony carving of a woman's head. The broken glass reflected the fragmented splinters of the statuette. Looking at the carving in its wholeness, and seeing her refractions in the shattered mirror, the images reminded Milly of the multifaceted emotions, experience and aspirations of each individual. The jagged edges of the reflection served as a metaphor of life itself, and she would combine a cubist style with the beauty of Africa to create a personal style all her own.
The 27 oil paintings in her "Crying Out" series are Milly's purest Afro-Cubist expressions and reflected the
social, political, and economic turmoil that engulfed Liberian society. The tumult drove Milly to other African countries in search of a common denominator to art forms, where she found additional inspiration as an artist.
Truly a renaissance woman, Milly is also an architect, a UN conference interpreter and translator speaking
five languages (French, German, Italian, Spanish and English), and a former model (including September 1971 Ebony Fashion Fair poster-model, Essence magazine). Milly's extensive sub-Saharan Africa life, coupled with her personal and professional relationships with Africans from all walks of life (the late President Sekou Toure of Guinea to recording artists Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba to uncelebrated market women, students, farmers, and fisherman) have produced a unique perspective from which to artistically represent the essence of the African struggle and spirit of resilience and hope. Milly is also a founding member of the Union of Liberian Artists an organization that creates a forum for the exchange of personal experiences in various refugee camps, motivates young self-taught artists to develop their skills, hosts art exhibits and promotes their works.
Retired since 1998, and mother of five adult children and twenty grandchildren, Milly now focuses all her time on painting. As she reflects on her artistic track record over some five decades, impressions of mindset redirection, national reconciliation, and reconstruction in her native Liberia can easily be seen in the vibrant colors of Afro-Cubism.