Year : 2012

Medium : canvas reproduction

Dimensions : 21″ x 32″

Availability : Limited edition ( sold out )

How bad can it get?

Imagine having little to nothing, I say imagine but for many today that imagined moment is currently a  reality. Now imagine wanting to give that little to God knowing that ”  He will throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. ” (Malachi 3; 10). and you are prohibited from doing so because of the….

….color of your skin.

The Perspective

The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as Black Tuesday and the Stock Market Crash of 1929, began in late October 1929 and was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States, The crash signaled the beginning of the 10-year Great Depression that affected all Western industrialized countries .The Great Depression devastated the United States. Hard times came to people throughout the country, especially rural blacks. Cotton prices plunged from eighteen to six cents a pound. Two thirds of some two million black farmers earned nothing or went into debt. Hundreds of thousands of sharecroppers left the land for the cities, leaving behind abandoned fields and homes. Even “Negro jobs” — jobs traditionally held by blacks, such as busboys, elevator operators, garbage men, porters, maids, and cooks — were sought by desperate unemployed whites. In Atlanta, Georgia, a Klan-like group called the Black Shirts paraded carrying signs that read, “No jobs for niggers until every white man has a job.” In other cities, people shouted “Niggers back to the cotton fields. City jobs are for white men.” And in Mississippi, where blacks traditionally held certain jobs on trains, several unemployed white men, seeking train jobs, ambushed and killed the black workers.

The painting “The Greatest Depression” was intended to show where our dependency lies in severe times of financial hardship. In the painting  we have a gentleman sitting on a trunk in front of a church. Possibly everything he owns is neatly tucked away beneath him. Hoping to pay his weekly tithes he found himself more depressed not simply because of the service times, but the fact that he had miss it. Not due to being just late , but just because.

Key points ;

• His purpose when trying to attend this small home style church.
• His tithes or ten percent.
• The time on his watch.

In 1930 the average salary for blacks was about 60 cents per day, for a fourteen hour day. How depressing it must be when you have and are willing to give and cannot.

The painting “The Greatest Depression” is from a series of works entitled “The Uncolored Series” Paintings about color without color. Each painting deals with a unique  issue in the stages of early African American life and culture.