Cynthia Hawkins (New York, 1950. Lives and works in Poughkeepsie) is a painter and researcher dedicated to recovering the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century African American artists. Her work draws on natural forms, physics, astronomy, and geometry, with gestures that evoke written language and the improvisational nature of jazz. Mark-making and the construction of mutable forms are central to her practice. She has held solo exhibitions at institutions such as Universidad de las Américas (Puebla), the Buffalo Science Museum, and the Walsh Gallery (Seton Hall University, South Orange). Her work has also been shown at the Museum of Modern Art and the Studio Museum in Harlem, both in New York.