Colonade

c. 1952
Oil on composite board
24.5" X 37.5"
James Ligon and Dean Finke, New York

In Haiti, “everybody was black and everybody had authority over the space that they were living in.... It’s not that there was not [racial] tension, but it was not on the same level. And these were people who were making do—the sort of thing that he grew up in. You did not have a lot, but you did have a life, and you did have a life that worked at the time. That is what you see in his most joyous paintings, in the Sea Islands and in Haiti. The surprise of Haiti is there.”
Margaret R. Vendryes, KET interview