William Pajaud

Best known for his vibrant, celebratory water­colors, William Pajaud always looked to his ethnic and cultural backgrounds for inspi­ration in his work, which features images of full-figured, powerful African American women, jazz funerals, street scenes, and other imagery from his childhood in New Orleans and his adult life in Los Angeles.

Pajaud knew he wanted to be a painter from a young age. When he was twelve, he painted his first watercolor, a picture of the windmill that appeared on Old Dutch Cleanser cans. Watercolor became his preferred medium. After the ninth grade, Pajaud moved with his mother, a social worker, to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he was sub­jected to several racially motivated incidents, including being seriously beaten for waving at a car with white passengers. A year later, when his mother joined the faculty of Texas College, they moved to Tyler, Texas, where Pajaud experienced another racist attack, this time being thrashed with a rope. In 1960 Pajaud's father, a musician, died while on his way to play music for a jazz funeral in New Orleans. These experiences had a pro­found influence on the artist. He once stated, "The awareness and acceptance of human­kind—universal, flowing life's awesome rhythms with dignity in pain, joy, poverty, and often jubilation—cause me to paint. My pri­mary need is to show my gut reaction to man's coping with the cycles of life and death."^#

Pajaud earned a BFA at Xavier University in New Orleans. He then spent time in Chicago before moving in 1948 to Los Angeles, where he enrolled at Chouinard Art Institute. While working at various jobs, including as a depart­ment store clerk, a janitor, a postal worker, and a position for which he used aniline dyes to paint the undergarments on a live model, he continued to produce paintings and prints, creating a substantial body of work. Pajaud exhibited at the Heritage Gallery, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and Esther Robles Gallery, and was also active in the Los Angeles arts community, participating in the short-lived co-op Eleven Associated. Members of the col­lectively run space included Beulah Woodard, Alice Gafford, and Tyrus Wong. Until the early to mid-1960s, Pajaud painted mostly land­scapes and marine scenes in a style that reflected his interest in Asian art and experi­ence working with Wong in Eleven Associated. 

Black American Artists '71, Illinois Art Council and Illinois Bell Lobby Gallery, Chicago, 1971.

Suzanne Jackson/William Pajaud/Charles White, Haggin Art Galleries, Pioneer Museum, University of the Pacific, Stockton, California, 1975.

California Black Artists, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, 1977.

Psalms, Sermons & Rituals: William Pajaud, Brockman Gallery, Los Angeles, 1981.

William Pajaud: The Sights and Sounds of My New Orleans, California African American Museum, Los Angeles, 2000.

The Life and Art of William Pajaud, M. Hanks Gallery, Santa Monica, 2003.

William Pajaud personal website. 

William Pajaud biography at The HistoryMakers.

William Pajaud Wikipedia page. 

Karen Anne Mason, "Interview of William Pajaud," 1993, African American Artists of Los Angeles, Oral History Program, University of California, Los Angeles. Transcript, Charles E. Young Research Library, Department of Special Collections, UCLA.

Adolfo Guzman Lopez, "Artist William Pajaud's Jazzy New Orleans," KCRW, January 4, 2006. 

David Colker, "William Pajaud Dies at 89; Watercolorist Amassed Prominent Collection of African American Art," Los Angeles Times obituary, June 26, 2015.