Leo Twiggs was born in St. Stephen, South Carolina. He received his BA Summa Cum Laude from Claflin University, later studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and received his MA from New York University where he studied with Hale Woodruff, the acclaimed African American painter and muralist. He received his doctorate in Art Education from the University of Georgia. As Professor of Art at South Carolina State University, he developed the Art Department and I.P. Stanback Museum. Twiggs was named Professor Emeritus in 2000. He was the first visual artist to receive the Verner Award (Governor’s Trophy) for outstanding contributions to the arts in South Carolina.Twiggs’ paintings are done in a unique, innovative batik technique that he developed after several years of experimenting with the traditional medium. He has had over 70 one-man shows and his work has received international recognition, with exhibits at the Studio Museum and the American Crafts Museum in New York and in U. S. Embassies in Rome, Dakar and Togoland, among others. His work has been widely published in art textbooks and featured in several television documentaries. In 2002 and 2008, he was selected to design ornaments for the White House Christmas tree and the Georgia Museum of Art organized a retrospective of his work that toured the southeast, 2004-2006. Hampton III Gallery in Taylors, and if ART Gallery in Columbia, South Carolina represent him in the Southeast and his studio is located in Orangeburg, South Carolina where he is Distinguished Artist in Residence at Claflin University. Many of the images in his batiks focus on mother images, bird images, and children, "I suppose that living in the low country with my grandmother, mother, sister, brother, uncles, and aunts have acted to shape what I explore in my work," Twiggs said. "The people I Knew were folks who lived, loved and died in their meager environment. However, there was a dignity about that existence, an existence not unlike that of many other people in the world." "East Wind Suite" was a series Twiggs produced after Hurricane Hugo hit the coast of South Carolina. His mother and family lived through the storm, and Twiggs was overwhelmed by the destruction the hurricane inflicted. "To me, the hurricane series is a coming together of all the images I had produced over the years--mother, family, and people I know," Twiggs said. "The hurricane series shows people in a dire situation. They are in the wind, unyielding, just like the people I know." Twiggs tells students, "I believe in the importance of the arts. I believe that they are repositories for the hopes and aspirations of a people, of a culture, and that they can combat discrimination and bring us closer together as human beings. To come to love, appreciate and respect the arts of a people is to come to love, appreciate and respect the people themselves. You must give love and respect to get love and respect."