Born in Long Creek, North Carolina, Minnie Evans embraced her creative sensibility late in life, when in 1935 a divine voice told her to “draw or die.” From that moment on, Evans conscientiously produced her signature chromatic, mythical drawings, sometimes executing as many as seven in one day as a form of religious discipline. Characterized by hypnotic, repetitious patterns replete with facial features, flora, and fauna, she rarely diverged from these symmetrical abstractions; however, no two are identical. Evans refused to provide interpretation of her work, readily acknowledging her own mystification at its process and portent: “They are just as strange to me as they are to anybody else.”
