Ealy Mays is a Paris-based African American painter whose work combines vivid color, narrative detail, and social commentary. His paintings bring together historical figures, everyday people, cultural symbols, and imagined situations to explore race, politics, migration, and the complexities of modern life. Sometimes humorous and sometimes pointedly critical, his compositions invite viewers to follow several stories within a single image. For Mays, painting is both a personal necessity and a means of recording experiences that might otherwise remain overlooked.

Born in Wichita Falls, Texas, and raised in Dayton, Ohio, Mays followed an unconventional path toward a professional art career. He earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and biology at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, before studying medicine at the Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara in Mexico. Painting remained a central interest throughout his education. His years in Mexico introduced him to a rich artistic environment, including an association with Rufino Tamayo, whom he identified as a mentor. Mays ultimately chose to pursue art rather than a medical internship.

In 1996, he attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, where he developed a significant relationship with Jacob Lawrence. Lawrence’s encouragement affirmed Mays’s commitment to narrative painting and his interest in representing both African American life and experiences beyond his own cultural background. In a later interview, Mays compared the narrative painter to a writer of short stories or a documentarian: an artist who communicates through the relationships among people, events, and images.

Mays settled in Paris in the late 1990s, joining the city’s longstanding community of African American expatriate artists. His practice has encompassed historical narratives, portraits, interiors, and satirical scenes, often using objects and settings to carry meaning alongside the figures themselves. His artistic interests extend across traditions, from Mexican mural painting to American modernism, while remaining grounded in his own observations and experiences.

Ballerina, the oil and acrylic painting presented here, shows a quieter aspect of his storytelling. Two Black dancers prepare in an intimate interior, one bending forward while the other adjusts her stocking. Pale blue and white tutus contrast with warm brown skin, golden floorboards, and a red suitcase in the foreground. Books, architectural details, and a glimpse of rooftops give the setting a lived-in character. The emphasis on preparation rather than performance offers a sympathetic view of the effort behind the dancers’ public artistry.

Mays’s exhibitions include a retrospective at ABXY in New York in 2017 and Red Carpet Joséphine at Galerie AVM in Paris in 2023, devoted to his engagement with Josephine Baker’s legacy. In 2024, his painting Chocolate Ex-Pats entered the National Gallery of Art through a gift from Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson. It was included in the museum’s 2025 exhibition With Passion and Purpose, providing recent institutional recognition of his contribution to contemporary narrative painting.