Collection Highlight: "Turtle Knows Your Name"

Ashley Bryan (United States, 1923–2022), Turtle Knows Your Name, circa 1989, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 35 1/2 inches. Gift of The Ashley Bryan Center, 2022.5. Image courtesy Luc Demers. © The Ashley Bryan Center

In the summer of 2018, the PMA presented the exhibition Painter and Poet: The Art of Ashley Bryan, the first major art museum exhibition in Maine for the award-winning artist and Little Cranberry Island resident. Bryan was a pioneer of African and African American representation in the children’s book medium and published more than 50 titles since his first collection of poems in 1967. Since Painter and Poet, the PMA and Bryan continued to build a lasting relationship, resulting in several gifts of artworks to the museum’s permanent collection. In 2022, the virtually unknown painting Turtle Knows Your Name, was discovered, which directly relates to the 1989 children’s book of the same name. Bryan would often turn to painting and collage to map out the illustrations for his publications. This brightly colored painting, with fluid brushstrokes, serves as a wonderful memory of Bryan’s process and legacy both in art and literature.

The story Turtle Knows Your Name recounts the adventure of a boy, Upsilimana Tumpalerado, who learns to say his name from his grandmother, and meets a mysterious turtle who collects the names of nearby villagers and spells them in shells at the bottom of the sea. In the painting, the fluid relationship between the boy and the turtle is depicted with long undulating lines, horizontal bands of color, and the rhythmic forms of the boy’s hands and the turtle’s body. Bryan’s painting proudly hangs on the PMA’s fourth floor, where we believe it is the first time it has ever been exhibited. His work is further set in the context of many other Maine-based artists who merge and celebrate art, animals, and storytelling.