Supper Time 1940

Horace Pippin made this painting, Supper Time, with oil on canvas, and it has the intimacy of a kitchen. The way the paint is put down so directly, almost crudely, feels very honest. Pippin used colour to create a kind of emotional geometry. The browns of the walls and table are warm and grounding, but then you’ve got that striking, almost electric blue of the woman's dress and the stark white of the laundry hanging up. The surface is built up with layers, each stroke visible, like you can see the artist working through the problem of how to represent the light, and the feeling of being together. Look at the texture of the wooden walls—it’s as if Pippin wanted to build a whole world out of paint, one notch at a time. There's something here of the directness of Bill Traylor, but with an eye for social dynamics that feels so specific to Pippin. He invites us into a world that is humble, solid, and very much his own.