Horace Pippin

HORACE PIPPIN  (1888 - 1946)

Horace Pippin, an African American painter, was one of the foremost self-taught artists of the twentieth century. A descendant of former slaves, Pippin was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, a small town near Philadelphia. Raised in Goshen, New York, he settled in West Chester as an adult. Pippin saw active duty in France during World War I as a member of the famous 369th Regiment of African American troops. Shot in the shoulder by a German sniper in 1917, he subsequently rekindled his boyhood interest in art when he taught himself to paint as therapy for his injury. In 1938 the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition, “Masters of Popular Painting,” included four Pippin paintings following his inclusion in a West Chester group show. Championed by Robert Carlin, his Philadelphia dealer, and by the Philadelphia collector Dr. Albert Barnes, Pippin’s talents soon garnered a national audience. In an essay ac-companying Pippin’s 1947 memorial exhibition, the Howard University scholar Alain Locke called him “a real and rare genius, combining folk quality with artistic maturity so uniquely as almost to defy classification.”

Horace Pippin was inspired by the biblical prophecy of Isaiah and painted a picture of 

peace with the lion and the lamb, the children playing with vipers and snakes, the lion eating hay with the ox and so much more.

And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.  God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness.  God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

"In the beginning, there were no blue skies, no cuddly babies or barking dogs. There was nothing at all. But then God began to create. God spoke and out of nothing came the sun, the moon, the earth, the mountains, the valleys, the plants and the animals. God's loving hands created everything around us."

-Sunday School Teachers

In the Beginning...

Genesis 1:1-31


In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was empty,
darkness was hovering over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was
hovering over the waters. (1:1&2)


Quote:


"We teach that God has created heaven and earth, and that in the manner and in the space of time recorded in the Holy Scriptures, especially Gen. 1 and 2, namely, by His almighty creative word, and in six days. We reject every doctrine which denies or limits the work of creation as taught in Scripture....Since no man was present when it pleased God to create the world, we must look for a reliable account of creation to God's own record, found in God's own book, the Bible..."  Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod's doctrine of creation; adopted 1932.