Little Girl in Orange 1944

William H. Johnson paints us this little girl in orange, with a limited palette of mostly flat colors, and a certain kind of charming awkwardness. I wonder, was Johnson thinking about Matisse when he painted this? Because I see that flattened-out decorative sense, but made home-spun. I can imagine Johnson’s hand moving deliberately, trying to capture the girl’s stillness and composure. There’s something so touchingly careful about those little red shoes and the way her patterned dress just pops against the pale lilac wall. And those eyes, wide and observant – what’s she thinking? Maybe Johnson was thinking about the weight of tradition, making a modern kind of folk art that tells a different kind of story. Johnson is in conversation with all of art history. It’s like he's saying: painting doesn’t always have to be fancy to be profound.