Little Rock artist breaks a record on Black Wall Street, travels to other state art shows

Theresa Cates, a self-taught artist from Little Rock, sold 17 paintings at Art on the Border at the Arkansas Colleges of Health and Education in Fort Smith July 22-23.

"I had a remarkable, remarkable show," she said. "They welcomed me with open arms, the people were very friendly, everything was awesome."

Cates said she was also contacted by a representative from the Fort Smith Museum of History to have her work installed.

Cates' artist journey began when she was just 5 years old.

Almost daily, her mother laid on the bathroom floor crying after being beaten by her husband. Cates laid down next to her mother and started to cry.

"The way he left was always the same, he would slam the door," Cates remembered.

Her mother told her to go get a pen. She ran upstairs, found one in the kitchen, and ran back to the bathroom. Her mother grabbed a piece of toilet paper and started drawing stick figures, and told her to draw something too.

They laid on the floor catching their breath and drawing together.

"Out of her pain, she was trying to make me happy," Cates said.

Facing adversity as a Black artist

Cates graduated from high school in Little Rock and became a mother at a young age. After leaving her first husband she found help at women's crisis center.

She kept drawing and her sketches turned into paintings.

She remarried and now has six children: four boys, a girl and a stepdaughter.

One of the first art shows Cates entered was the Argenta Art Walk in historic downtown North Little Rock. She wasn't confident in her work at the time, but entered her paintings anyway. She said the judges let her know immediately that she was in.

From that point, her self-esteem as an artist grew and she participated in more community art events.

In 2014, Melody Stanley, artist and owner of the Red Door Gallery in North Little Rock, noticed Cates' work and introduced her to a public art project called Main Street Arkansas. Her role in the project was to paint traffic control boxes on Main Street, and she went on to complete several public art murals in North Little Rock and Jacksonville.

However, her paintings on the traffic control boxes cannot be seen today because they were painted over.

A traffic box and power line towers near the John F. Kennedy Boulevard exit off Interstate 40 were also painted over. The box now reads “Perfectly Park Hill.”

Cates was stopped by the police during the process of this mural and had to call Stanley to verify her project with the Red Door Gallery.

Cary Tyson, former head of the Park Hill Neighborhood Association, said the decision to paint over the box had nothing to do with race.

Cates' last traffic box mural project depicted an undulating piano, held in the air by church choir singers and congregation members.

Former Jacksonville Mayor Gary Fletcher informed Cates that he'd have to remove her artwork after receiving complaints from residents, including one who said the box looked like a scene from a “ghetto.”

Cates' ended up meeting with Fletcher who decided to keep the mural in place.

She was never reimbursed for her other public murals.

Making it to Black Wall Street

Cates' said the inspiration for her paintings come from her everyday life.

For the last seven years, she has participated art shows around the state, including the Delta Arts Festival in Newport, Daughters of the Diaspora – Women of Color Speak in Hot Springs and Art on the Border in Fort Smith.

Cates' started offering painting classes for community organizations and residents.

Shortly after, she developed the concept for Art in Motion, a live performance and painting class in one.

While Cates paints her signature picture of a woman dancing in a red dress, a speaker reads her life testimony, a mime enacts the emotions and a dancer appears at the end on stage.

Cates said she wanted to give audience members something "different" and present the full feeling of everything she's endured in her life.

In 2020, staff at the Greenwood Gallery, formerly the Black Wall Street Gallery in Tulsa, reached out to Cates to about featuring her work.

The Black Wall Street Gallery in New York City announced her show “Still Swingin’ Low” as the first-ever solo show at the gallery.

Cates broke the gallery's sale record by with a total of 38 paintings sold by the end of her show.

"I went from painting, holding my canvas in my hand to learning how to paint on an easel, to painting on my dining room table, to painting in my garage, to painting in my own studio," she said.

Opening Majestic Motions

In August of last year, Majestic Motions art studio and gallery had its ribbon cutting ceremony at 300 Rivermarket Avenue.

Cates continues to offer classes and Art in Motion live performances.

In May, the North Little Rock Convention & Visitors Bureau announced the completion of Cates' mural for Lindsey's BBQ and Hospitality House.

Her goal is to complete more large murals in the downtown area for children to enjoy.

"It was probably in my late 20s before I ever went to an art gallery," she said. "A child may never go to a museum or art gallery in their life, but I want them to be able to see a real artists work and original art outside."

It's important to Cates that young people in her community know they can be whoever they want to be and have any career they want.

"I want them to see just because you don't play basketball or football, there are other things that you can be in life and this is one of them," she said. "As many walls as I can paint I'm going to paint."

'A gift birthed out of pain'

Cates' mother eventually had the strength to divorce her abusive, alcoholic husband.

She raised Cates and her two siblings as a a single mother "for the rest of her life." Cates recalls coming home from school and not having electricity or running water.

She needed an "out" to escape the post-traumatic stress brought on from her father.

"I just noticed that the sketches and drawings brought so much relief to me. It was always my go-to," she said. "I was kind of a loner as a child, but it always made me feel good."

Cates said for her to defy what statistics said she would be after surviving domestic violence is amazing.

She wants to be able to give back to women and children by donating to the women's crisis centers in the North Little Rock area.

"I want to be able to give back because it helped us, it helped me," she said. "When you grow up like that, your trust is (gone). I call it my gift from God. I went through so much before I was five. In my heart I feel like that's God's way of loving me and saying, 'here.'"

Cates said once she met Christ and learned about the power of forgiveness, she was able to turn her pain into paintings.

"Once I forgave and walked in it," she said "I got a gift out of it and it's making room for me."

This article originally appeared on Fort Smith Times Record: Little Rock artist uses art to heal wounds from domestic abuse