Ealy Mays

Most recently Ealy Mays' works "Death of an American Boom Town", "Submarine of Radicals" and "Uptown Ice Cream", were featured in "Landscape of Being", Agency Art Life and Society's international ebook, (pp. 24–25, 30), and tribute project by global artists, to the state of being in the world, based largely on the philosophies of German sculptor and performance artist Joseph Beuys.

In the March 2012 Modern Luxury DC Magazine, Ealy Mays's "Mona Lisa Likes Pancakes" was featured along with Romare Bearden's "Untitled", Laura Abbate's "Untitled", John McMahon's "Obama 2008", and C. M. Birge's "Dancer Male Bronze", among the collection of fame philanthropist and patron of the arts Reginald Van Lee.[6]

In 2012, Mays exhibited in the Contemporary Art Fair in New York. He appears regularly in local Parisian newspapers art round-ups such as a Le Monde October 2008 piece that featured Mays' submarine in a local art show and described it as "a formidable submarine which takes one into other waters", and Le Figaro′s coverage of a local Barack Obama-themed gallery exhibition, "Obama in a Parisian Gallery",.

Ealy Mays was also profiled in The Artist Showcase magazine's December 2012 Art Basel Miami edition, which also featured the works of Nelson Mandela at Robben Island.

A September 2011 Washington Post article by travel writer Robin Bennefield, "Understanding black Paris", featured Mays in his favorite pastime as a local historian in pursuit of preserving the legacy of African-American artists and intellectuals in the city.

In an April 2009 New York Times article, "An American (Celebration) in Paris", Ealy Mays was cited as one of the expat artists featured in a Barack Obama-themed exhibition. Writer Jon Frosch described his work as "A more satirically edged black-and-white painting by African-American artist Ealy Mays invites the viewer to locate two figures — a lone black soldier and a white man with an Obama T-shirt strumming on a banjo, among a sea of zombie-like Wall Street workers.".

In a September 1996 Dayton Daily News article on Ealy Mays, "A Pure Painter", writer Kathy Whyde Jesse profiled the then 37-year-old local Daytonian and Fairview High School graduate who was a medical school student and a recipient of the "Camille Cosby Fellowship for American Artists of African Descent", on completion of his fellowship at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, while on a sabbatical from medical school in Mexico. Mays discussed, among other things, the influence of Maxfield Parrish on his work and his affection for legendary African-American artist Jacob Lawrence, who inspired him to apply to the Skowhegan program. According to Mays, Jacob Lawrence, returned the affection by telling him that he, Mays, was a "pure painter".

Ealy Mays headed to Paris shortly after leaving the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1996. He followed in the footsteps of other African American artists, performers, and intellectuals such as Victor Séjour, Henry O. Tanner, Ira Aldridge, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Josephine Baker, and others who, since the mid-19th century, have chosen Paris and elsewhere in France and Europe for study or expatriate life. Mays believed that Paris could provide him a venue without ostracism or social stigma for his type of work. The city was also home to some of his mentors a generation before him, such as Edward Clark (artist). While he continues to exhibit in the United States, he chose the life of an expatriate in Paris since the late '90s. Having been featured in varied collective exhibits in the US prior to living in Paris, such as at the Guggenheim Museum, Mays credits Paris with being the gateway for international recognition and exhibitions in Paris and throughout France, in Italy, Finland, Germany, Russia, Vienna Austria, and even in the United States.

On graduating from Fairview High School in Dayton, Mays attended Wiley College in Marshall, Texas. He then set out in his father's footsteps to study medicine even though art remained his passion. He chose to study in Mexico where he believed he would have been able to get his education while indulging his passion for art so he applied and was accepted to study medicine at Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara School of Medicine (UAG) in 1985.

The west Texas native, born in Wichita Falls Texas, to physician Dr. Dewey Mays [2] and his school teacher wife Mrs. Ruby Mays, was raised in Dayton, Ohio. The family moved to Dayton after the elder Mays graduated from Howard University's School of Medicine. Mays states that his parents chose to live in Dayton, because at the time in the mid 1960s, Dayton had a strong industrial base and was one of the best places to live and to raise a family in America. His 1998 painting, “Death of an American Boom Town (Dayton Ohio)” demurs the economic decline of the industrial mid-west and in particular, the demise in quality of life in his former hometown of Dayton, Ohio.

Ealy Mays (born January 15, 1959) is a Paris-based African-American contemporary artist. His work has been exhibited in Mexico's Galeria Clave, Paris’ Carrousel du Louvre, Mexico's annual José Clemente Orozco Art competition, and New York's Guggenheim museum, to name a few. Legendary painter Henry O. Tanner was the first African American to exhibit at the Louvre in 1897. Mays’ 2005 “Migration of the Superheroes” exhibition at the Carrousel du Louvre makes him one of the few African-American artists to date to follow Tanner's footsteps to the Louvre.