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Charlie "Tin Man" Lucas (American, b. 1951) — The Dancers
Painting on board, signed. Framed.
Board: 23.75'' x 23.75'' (60 x 60 cm)
Frame: 29.5'' x 29'' (75 x 74 cm)
Rendered with the raw immediacy and storytelling power that defines his practice, The Dancers is a vivid, rhythmic painting by celebrated self-taught artist Charlie "Tin Man" Lucas. Known for incorporating found and discarded materials into his work—quilts, tools, broken furniture—Lucas builds narratives rooted in his lived experience as a Black artist from Alabama. This piece echoes the movement, memory, and generational resilience that shape much of his output, from his grandmother’s time to the present day.
Lucas has been an artist-in-residence at Yale University, and his monumental metal sculptures are permanently installed at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts. This work was acquired directly from the artist by the current owner and is a rare example of his two-dimensional practice, framed and ready for display.
Charlie Lucas exhibited extraordinary creative and mechanical ability from a young age. The son of a chauffeur and skilled auto mechanic in Jefferson County, Alabama, Lucas learned early how to dismantle and rebuild engines—skills that would later influence the structural ingenuity of his sculptural work. His mother was a gifted quilter, and his family lineage included a gunsmith, chair caner, and blacksmith—craftsmen whose quiet dedication and spiritual practice deeply shaped Lucas’s approach. “My great-grandfather Jackson was the gentlest man I ever knew,” he recalled. “He always put God in his work and through him, I put God in my work.”
As one of fourteen children, Charlie often felt like the outsider—drawn to making things when others didn’t understand why. “I’ve been making toys since I was a kid,” he once said. “It is toys to me—if I called them anything else I wouldn’t know what I was talking about.” After leaving home at 14, he supported himself with construction and painting jobs across the South, eventually returning to Autauga County in 1971 to marry Annie Lykes and start a family. A debilitating back injury later became a turning point: bedridden and unable to work, he began painting and sculpting with discarded metal, asking God to help him do something no one else could. That’s when “The Tin Man” was born—named not only for his chosen medium, but for the ten dollars he had left in his pocket.
“I don’t care if my name is in lights,” Lucas has said. “My art is my family and friends. Through the Kind Spirit, the pieces I don’t sell talk to me and teach me... Now people recognize me and say, ‘there goes Charlie Lucas.’”