Say it unto the Angel That Came to the Men

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    Photo: Stephen Pitkin/Pitkin Studio
1972
Paint on wood
96 x 48 inches
Collection of
High Museum of Art
Museum purchase and gift of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation
Description

When I started with the figure painting, I liked to show good peoples, the heroes, like that. They fight for a cause. They done good things, they helped the struggle, you know. They're not necessarily just black peoples. I got good white peoples in my paintings. I paint a lot of them white workers. A lot of Quakers, jeopardizing their life, lost their life trying to help black people against slavery. I sometimes have my mind set on John Brown. He tried to liberate the slaves. He died a year before the Civil War. Before that he was a preacher, I guess. I put him in some of my paintings. Some of the white peoples I put in my art are somebody like John Brown. I don't much tell nobody about that.