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The Lost World: The Art of Minnie Evans
Edited with text by Katherine Jentleson. Foreword by Rand Suffolk. Text by Kim Conaty, María Elena Ortiz, Elizabeth Penton, Wayne Evans.
Visionary self-taught Southern folk artist Minnie Evans receives a long overdue encore of her mystical, divinely inspired drawings
Published with High Museum of Art.
American outsider artist Minnie Evans once said her drawings of harmoniously intertwined human, botanical and animal forms came from visions of “the lost world,” or nations destroyed by the Great Flood as described in the Book of Genesis. As the visions she experienced in childhood became stronger, Evans produced a large body of work ranging from abstract to representational styles. When she turned 56, she transitioned from decades of employment as a domestic worker to collecting admissions at Airlie Gardens in Wilmington, North Carolina. She made art during idle moments and hung it on and near the Gardens’ wrought-iron gate. Selling or giving away her drawings to visitors led to a wider reputation and eventually a 1966 exhibition at a New York church titled The Lost World of Minnie Evans. This publication reprises that 1966 title, honoring Evans’s interest in biblical and ancient civilizations while foregrounding the spiritual and historical circumstances of her extraordinary life. More than 100 of her artworks are presented in a range of contexts, from the extrasensory experiences of her visions to the double-edged realities of her life in the Jim Crow South. Her drawings, beautiful and complex, thus become portals into her “lost world.” A beloved figure in her hometown of Wilmington, Minnie Evans (1892–1987) began her drawing practice in 1935 and produced more than 3,000 works during her lifetime. She was the subject of the 1983 film The Angel that Stands By Me and the forthcoming documentary Draw or Die by Linda Royal.
STATUS: Forthcoming | 1/6/2026
This title is not yet published in the U.S. To pre-order or receive notice when the book is available, please email orders @ artbook.com
Published by DelMonico Books. Edited with text by Katherine Jentleson. Foreword by Rand Suffolk. Text by Kim Conaty, María Elena Ortiz, Elizabeth Penton, Wayne Evans.
Visionary self-taught Southern folk artist Minnie Evans receives a long overdue encore of her mystical, divinely inspired drawings
Published with High Museum of Art.
American outsider artist Minnie Evans once said her drawings of harmoniously intertwined human, botanical and animal forms came from visions of “the lost world,” or nations destroyed by the Great Flood as described in the Book of Genesis. As the visions she experienced in childhood became stronger, Evans produced a large body of work ranging from abstract to representational styles. When she turned 56, she transitioned from decades of employment as a domestic worker to collecting admissions at Airlie Gardens in Wilmington, North Carolina. She made art during idle moments and hung it on and near the Gardens’ wrought-iron gate. Selling or giving away her drawings to visitors led to a wider reputation and eventually a 1966 exhibition at a New York church titled The Lost World of Minnie Evans.
This publication reprises that 1966 title, honoring Evans’s interest in biblical and ancient civilizations while foregrounding the spiritual and historical circumstances of her extraordinary life. More than 100 of her artworks are presented in a range of contexts, from the extrasensory experiences of her visions to the double-edged realities of her life in the Jim Crow South. Her drawings, beautiful and complex, thus become portals into her “lost world.”
A beloved figure in her hometown of Wilmington, Minnie Evans (1892–1987) began her drawing practice in 1935 and produced more than 3,000 works during her lifetime. She was the subject of the 1983 film The Angel that Stands By Me and the forthcoming documentary Draw or Die by Linda Royal.
