Horace Pippin (1888-1946)
Losing the Way, n.d.
Horace Pippin was born in West Chester Pennsylvania. He was a self taught artist whose subject matter ranged from paintings of childhood memories, war experiences, personal heroes and religion. These paintings were widely exhibited and became fashionable along the Main Line in Philadelphia. Pippin once commented, “When I was a boy I loved to make pictures”, but it was World War I that “brought out all the art in me…. I can never forget suffering and I will never forget sunset…so I came home with all of it in my mind and I paint from it today.
Pippin recorded his experiences in writing as well. His “Life Story of Art” and other memoirs of his military service include descriptions of life in the trenches, night forays into no man’s land and losing his platoon to machine gun fire. Pippin lost the use of his right arm after being shot by a German sniper. He adapted by using his left hand to guide his right while painting.
His winter scene Losing the Way (1930) was painted in oil on a burnt-wood panel, suggesting the highly individualized technical approaches taken by folk artists. A man walks in the snow beside a horse-drawn covered wagon in search of the path, which has been covered by snow. The painting is small as the artist’s disability limited his ability to work on a large scale. It was one of a series of oil on burnt-wood panels he executed. He would draw his designs in pencil, then burning the line with a hot poker, before applying paint.
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