Deep Are The Roots 1945

Horace Pippin made this painting with humble materials, maybe household paint applied to a textured canvas or board. There's an interior, a drama unfolding. It’s a domestic scene, yet the figures are oddly stiff, their emotions somehow muted, which gives the scene a strange kind of intensity. I'm thinking about Pippin's hand, the very act of pushing the paint around to depict the figures, the furniture, the very air in the room. What was he thinking about? Perhaps the social tensions of his time, the deep-seated prejudices that simmer beneath the surface of everyday life? The painting feels both stagey and deeply heartfelt, like a play performed with handmade props. He captures not just what things look like, but how they feel. The flatness of the figures reminds me of other self-taught painters like Bill Traylor. I see a conversation happening across time.