The Artwork of George E. Mitchell

1949 - 2021

George E. Mitchell was born in Durham in 1949 and passed away in 2021. After graduating from North Carolina Central University, Mitchell earned his MFA in Sculpture from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1974. In an artist statement for his Master’s Thesis, Mitchell explained that he chose to work with fiberglass for its flexibility, durability and weather resistance. Throughout his career, Mitchell demonstrated an ability to harness and wield seemingly any medium for his art.

In 2003, an act of domestic gun violence left the prolific artist and art professor suddenly paralyzed and in a battle for his life, impairing his ability to continue his work as an artist. Mitchell was working on "The Olympic Series," a group of paintings inspired by African American Olympic athletes who represented the United States in Atlanta in 1996. Mitchell used bold colors, dramatic lines, and shapes to herald larger-than-life figures on canvas.

As Mitchell worked to complete this series, the muscular grace of these athletes is now infused with his own Atlas-like strength of will and spirit. Mitchell was The Dreamer, he was the fiberglass: moldable, flexible, and capable of weathering life’s harshest elements.

Ironically, those athletes and the subjects of Mitchell’s five decades of work, though linked by a common tenacity of spirit, must be cared for and catalogued in order to continue to endure as part of Mitchell’s lasting artistic legacy. This is a tribute to our friend and mentor George Mitchell.

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