The paintings by Minnie Evans may be categorized as unconscious surrealism. Minnie Evans was born near Long Creak North Carolina in 1890. She moved to Wilmington North Carolina during her early childhood and lived there ever since.

Evans traces her ancestry to her great-grandmothers great-grandmother who was brought to America as a slave from Trinidad. Although she has never been to Trinidad and had never left Wilmington before going to New York in 1966 for the opening of her first show, there are elements in her art which are analogous to Caribbean folk art.

In color and subject matter Evans complex designs also reveal unaccountable links with East Indian, Chinese and Western elements. Her own explanation for the basis of her work is, “This art that I have put out has come from nation I suppose might have been destroyed before the flood… No one know anything about them, but God has given it to me to bring them into the world.” Evans has always been a dreamer. She was informed by a fortune teller in 1944 that she was wrapped complete in color and that she had “something of all nation.” Evans relates the source of her paintings to the subconscious, “I have no imagination” she has stated. “They just happen in a dream it was shown to me what I have to do of paintings. The whole entire horizon was put together like this with pictures.”

The dream world of Minnie Evans received its earlier tangible manifestations on Good Friday in 1925 when she completed two small abstract pen and ink drawings with innumerable serpentine forms. Her earliest paintings were executed entirely with wax crayons and represent a vigorous exercise in color, including every hue. Her colors include the tonal range of greens, purples from mauve to pink, rose and royal and full ranges of reds, blues and yellows with a sparing use of black and white. Evans has also completed some oil paintings with are generally more subdued than her crayon designs.