Claude Lawrence

Claude Lawrence (born 1944) is an American jazz tenor saxophonist and self-taught abstract artist. Beginning in the 1960s he had a successful career as a jazz musician before switching his focus to painting full-time in the 1980s. His art is held in the permanent collections of more than twenty museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Parrish Art Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Early life

Born in 1944, Claude Lawrence grew up on the South Side of Chicago. His father was a construction worker originally from the Mississippi Delta. Lawrence began playing tenor saxophone at age 14. He attended a vocational high school for commercial art and instrumental music, where he was classmates with fellow musicians Frederick J. Brown, Anthony Braxton and Jack DeJohnette.

Career

Jazz

After graduating high school, Lawrence formed The Claude Lawrence Trio and began playing jazz in Chicago clubs. He would also play in groups with members from the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. To make ends meet, he worked a number of jobs, including as a bus driver, taxi driver, construction worker and mail carrier.

Lawrence first visited New York City in 1964, drawn to the music scene there. Over the next few years he split his time between Chicago and New York playing jazz in both cities before settling in New York for an extended period of time beginning in 1968. Lawrence has described moving amongst hippy crowds in both cities, often staying with other artists and musicians. Throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, Lawrence continued playing jazz in New York and throughout the country. During this time, he also worked a number of odd jobs including painting houses, cleaning chandeliers, teaching Tai Chi and groundskeeping for the University of Connecticut.

Painting

In the 1980s, Lawrence began focusing on painting full-time after a psychic friend told him it was time for a change. Over the next three decades, he spent long stretches of time living and working in Sag Harbor, New York, a seaside community on Long Island with a history as a Black cultural enclave. He also lived at times in New York City, Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, Mexico City and France.

In 2013, art collectors Lyn and E.T. Williams Jr. bought a large collection of Clyde Lawrence’s paintings and began donating them to museums. His art is now part of the permanent collections of more than 20 museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Parrish Art Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

In 2016 Lawrence’s work was featured in “Modern Heroics: 75 Years of African-American Expressionism” at the Newark Museum.

In 2024, Lawrence’s Reflections on Porgy and Bess exhibited at Venus Over Manhattan gallery. The show featured 22 abstract paintings inspired by George Gershwin’s revered opera Porgy and Bess.

Other art galleries that have exhibited his work include Anthony Meier in San Francisco and the LAB in Seattle.

Personal life

Lawrence is longtime partners with artist Leslee Howes Stradford. Together they have held residencies at institutions such as Chateau Orquevaux in France and The Church in Sag Harbor.