"Varnette Honeywood"{December 27,1950-September 12,2010}

Was an American painter,writer,and businesswoman whose paintings and collages depicting African-American life hung on walls in interior settings for The Cosby Show after Camille and Bill Cosby had seen her art and start collecting some of her works.Varnette paintings also appeared on television on the Cosby Show spin-off A Different World,as well as on the TV series Amen and 227.She was born in Los Angeles,where she studied art as teenager at the Chouinard Art Institute.Her parents,Stepney and Lovie Honeywood,were elementary school teachers who had come to California  from Louisiana and Mississippi.Varnette earned her undergraduate degree in art in 1972 from Spelman College in Atlanta,the first historically black female school of higher education in the United States.(She would exhibit there in 1987.)Varnette earned her master's degree from the University of Southern California in 1974,where she majored in education.As part of a community outreach program conducted by USC,Varnette used her training to teach multicultural arts and crafts to minority children in public schools.Her work,influenced by such artists as Romare Burden and Jacob Lawrence showed African-Americans in everyday life,in family and social settings.The time she spent visiting relatives in the South during her childhood,her college experience at Spelman and a 1977 trip to Nigeria all provided themes for paintings.She and her sister Stephanie established the greeting-card Black lifestyles with cards showing her brightly colored portraits depicting the daily life of African-Americans,making it the first such company specializing in black themes.Camille Cosby discovered Varnette work on note cards and she and her husband started collecting her works.This led to the inclusion of Varnnette's artwork,including her 1974 painting "Birthday,"on the walls of the Huxtable living room on the set of The Cosby Show.She had been asked to create a painting to be included for the show's pilot and different examples of her paintings were cycled through during the show's run.Varnette later created a mural as a backdrop for Bill's TV series Kids Say the Darnedest Things, and her art appeared in the TV series Amen, 227 and a Different World.Varnette worked together with Bill to create the characters and illustrations in the 12 books in the series,which became the basis for the Nick Jr.Series Little Bill.Bill credited Varnette with the positive depictions of African-Americans life in which "you can see teenagers doing homework, a family cooking a meal,girls doing their hair,"rather than showing "segregation,starving and homelessness.Varnette died in Los Angeles after fighting cancer for two years.