Faith Ringgold's art practice is extremely varied in its use of assorted methods and media. She began exhibiting paintings in the 1950s, making works inspired by James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, African art, Cubism, and Impressionism. The shapes were flat, clinging to the picture plane, and the content not as overtly political as what was to come after 1963, when civil rights became a focus.
Read MoreSpurred on by Baldwin's writing, the earlier paintings of Jacob Lawrence, and the turbulent nature of the times, she created the 'American People' series, where she promoted both civil rights and feminist issues through her critiquing imagery, which in its textures became formally more modulated.
In 1970, as a contributing artist to The People's Flag Show at Judson Memorial Church in New York, Ringgold was arrested for desecrating the American flag. Later works that continue this theme of combating repressive legislation include The Flag Is Bleeding #2 (American Collection #6) (1997).
In the early 1970s Ringgold began to stop working on conventional paintings and started making unstretched acrylic-on-canvas works with fabric borders that were related to Tibetan thangka silk paintings. These she enlarged to quilt size, and in 1983 she combined handwritten text with the images to express storytelling narratives. The first was Who's Afraid of Aunt Jemima (1983).
In the 1970s, Ringgold with her mother also began making masks of raffia and fabric inspired by African tribal costume, and large, life-sized, stuffed dolls to be used in performances such as The Wake and Resurrection of the Bicentennial Negro (1976), which incorporated singing, music, and dance.
In the early 1990s with her Tar Beach quilts, woodcuts, and book from the series 'Women on a Bridge', Ringgold created Cassie Louise Lightfoot, an eight-year-old African-American girl living in Harlem. She is shown flying high about the rooftops like an angel in a quattrocento painting.
