'Draw or Die' documentary by NC filmmaker spotlights artist Minnie Evans

The vibrant, serene patterns of Minnie Evans’ drawings are instantly recognizable, but during her life, she was an outsider to mainstream art institutions. Winston-Salem-based filmmaker Linda Royal tells her story in the documentary titled Minnie Evans: Draw or Die.

Evans started sketching while working as a gatekeeper at Airlie Gardens in Wilmington in 1935. At age 43, she said she heard a voice that told her to “draw or die.” Royal says Evans began "with just some extraordinary marks with pencil on a grocery bag paper. And then how over the decades, to see the pieces that are now in museums that are extremely intricate and mesmerizing and contain all kinds of different elements based on nature and her visions." 

Central to the film is Evans’ friendship with photographer Nina Howell Starr. Starr spent 25 years advocating for Evans’ work. The documentary highlights Starr’s attraction to the supernatural elements in the artist’s drawings and paintings. “It’s her mystical revelations and her great beauty of feeling and her incredible insights into situations we know very little about. I really feel that Minnie has powers that I’m sure not many of us have," Starr says in the film.

Exhibitions of Evans’ work are opening across the country this year, including at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Royal plans to release her film in April. With it, she aims to deepen awareness of women artists with unlikely trajectories.