The art and life of one of American modernism's most important painters "Since love of life people and painting are to me the same as long as I can lift a brush my heart and mind remain dedicated and my faith steadfast," Beauford Delaney (1901-1979) wrote of his existence as an artist. He lived up to these words. For more than fifty years, Delaney devoted himself to painting, journeying from his birthplace in Knoxville, Tennessee, to Boston, New York, and eventually Paris in pursuit of artistic mastery. Along the way, he exhibited in the same museums and galleries as Jackson Pollock, Romare Bearden, and Sam Francis and amassed a circle of admirers that included James Baldwin, Henry Miller, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Ornette Coleman. Lovelight follows Delaney on his artistic voyages, beginning with his childhood in Appalachia and ending with his final years in France. Drawing on extensive archival research, rarely seen images, interviews with Delaney's friends, and the painter's own writings, Mary Campbell examines a body of work that ranks among the great achievements of twentieth-century modernism. Lovelight also reveals the extent to which Delaney's paintings rejected the labels that were imposed on him throughout his life. As a queer Black man who sometimes suffered from hallucinations, Delaney was repeatedly reduced to categories and stereotypes. In the face of this, he made work that celebrated forms of connection and love that contemporary America never would have accepted. Building on his family's teachings that art constitutes "the immortal sons and daughters of the soul," Delaney painted his own vision of artistic fathers, lovers, and spiritual progeny. In writing the first book-length study of Delaney's work, Campbell gives a moving account of a painter who ultimately sought to unite what he called "the universal inclusive facets of the human family."