Family Portrait 1944

William H. Johnson made this 'Family Portrait' with oil on paper using a pared-down palette of reds, yellows, greens, purples, and blues. It's giving memory, maybe even a dream. I can imagine Johnson layering these colours, one on top of the other, feeling his way through the composition, simplifying and editing as he goes, reducing the figures to their bare essentials. Look at those eyes! What’s going on there? There’s a push and pull between flatness and depth, abstraction and figuration. It reminds me a little of Marsden Hartley, but it’s got this grounded quality, maybe something to do with the flattening of forms, combined with the emotional weight of the subject, a family. I wonder how Johnson saw his own family? The picture plane becomes a meeting place, a site of inquiry. These figures are looking towards the future.