Ealy Mays

Ealy Mays (born January 15, 1959) is a Paris-based American contemporary painter whose work operates at the intersection of history, identity, and social critique. Working in a bold, chromatic signature style with a satirical edge, Mays transforms cultural memory into urgent visual commentary — examining race, power, and the enduring complexity of the Black experience in the Western world.
As a Black American living in Paris, he is in constant dialogue with two worlds. France gave him distance — the particular clarity that comes from looking at one’s own country from the outside — and a mirror: the long tradition of Black American artists who came to this same city seeking creative freedom. That inheritance is both a comfort and a responsibility. His work Chocolate Ex-Pats (oil on canvas) entered the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. in 2024, as a gift of collectors Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson.
His paintings are social documents. They record the absurdities and violences of our time, dressed sometimes in bright colour and ironic form — because that is how people have always survived what would otherwise be unbearable. The image that looks celebratory may be mourning. The figure that appears t...

Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture — Maine, USA, 1996

Universidad de Guadalajara — Guadalajara, Mexico
Medicine — during which painting became a concurrent and increasingly defining practice

2024
-Chocolate Ex-Pats | Permanent Collection | National Gallery of Art | Washington, D.C. | Gift of Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson

2021
- Memories and Inspiration: The Kerry and C. Betty Davis Collection of African American Art | The Appleton Museum of Art | Ocala, FL (Traveling)

2020
- Memories and Inspiration: The Kerry and C. Betty Davis Collection of African American Art | The Gilcrease Museum | Tulsa, OK (January - July) and University of Richmond Museum | Richmond VA (August - November)
- Group Show | ABXY Gallery | New York, NY

2019
-ABXY Beach, Group Exhibition | Haven | Montauk, New York

2018
- Art Shopping, International Contemporart Art Fair Paris, Carrousel du Louvre - Individual Exhibition

2017
- Think Outside the Box. An Ealy Mays Retrospective of 1987-2017" | Pinter Gallery and Auction House |Budapest, Hungary | Individual Exhibition | Curator Barbara Brzoska and Timea Klincsek
- Ealy Mays: A Retrospective | ABXY Gallery | New York, NY
- Atelier 2 Deauville, Deauville France - Collective Exhibition with Caroline Sand - "Upside down"

2016
- Ealy Mays and Image Perception | Hammonds House Museum | AARL Satellite Gallery | Atlanta, Georgia | From the Collections of Kerry and C. Betty Davis, Greg Richardson, La...