Shell Holes And Observation Balloon, Champagne Sector 1931

Horace Pippin made this painting, Shell Holes And Observation Balloon, Champagne Sector, using what looks like thin layers of sombre blues and grays to build up a scene of total devastation. I can imagine him carefully building up the composition, area by area, with the weight of the experience he is trying to convey. The paint is applied thinly, almost like a stain, which creates a ghostly effect, appropriate for the subject. You can see the house reduced to rubble and, in the foreground, these huge craters – scars on the landscape. The cracks in the paint surface are an interesting addition to the composition, almost as if the painting itself is breaking apart. The artist seems to be thinking about the ways trauma leaves marks behind, on the land, on buildings, and on people. Painting is a way of coming to terms with what he has seen, thinking it through. He's in conversation with a lot of other painters, too, carrying on the exchange of ideas and experience.