Robert E. Paige

Robert Earl Paige (1936) is a multi-disciplinary artist and arts educator working across textile design, painting, collage, and sculpture based in Woodlawn, Chicago.

As an artist and textile designer allied with the Black Arts Movement, Robert E. Paige trained at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and worked at the architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Sears Roebuck & Company and Fiorio Milano design house in Italy.

Paige was raised in Chicago's South Side where he continues to live and work, further developing his longstanding career in the decorative arts. His work visually and conceptually interrogates political and cultural themes that reflect both historical and contemporary African American art references, as well as traditional textile practices of West Africa.

For much of his career Paige considered himself a "ghost artist", as much of his work went into circulation without the attachment of his name as a designer, although his "Kool-Aid Color" textile designs helped popularize West African patterns to American shoppers.

He is now an artist in residence at the Dusable Museum and has expanded his creative practice beyond textiles and is experimenting in painting, drawing, and ceramics. His work has since been exhibited in major art institutions and museums including the Art Institute of Chicago, Salon 94 Design Gallery in New York, The Hyde Park Art Center, and Kavi Gupta Gallery in Chicago.