With bright colors and bold strokes, the images seen in Lucy Hunnicutt’s work pay homage to her Southern roots. An Alabama native, she didn’t start painting until just before turning 40. Her first efforts came out spontaneously as she painted images from a dream with leftover house paints on old scraps of cypress wood. Now, she primarily paints with acrylics on wood panels and tin.
For nine years she lived in a small town in North Florida with a population of less than 300 people. It was in this rural town that she first began to paint. The house that she rented had been part of a land grant to African Americans after the Civil War. With two churches at each end of her street, she spent many Sunday mornings on her front porch listening to the choirs from both ends.
The memories of her neighbors in this small town appear in her work frequently. Women tending gardens, folks hanging out at the local juke joint, or going off to church in their Sunday best. She has also developed a unique style of lettering that often tells a story or explains a scene. Each letter is set off by a black background and serves as a vibrant little painting on its own.

Hunnicutt’s work is shown at galleries in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and North Carolina. Several of her paintings were selected by a set decorator for Paramount Pictures to appear in the Queen Latifah movie, “Last Holiday” in 2006.