Born in West Chester, Pennsylvania in 1888, Horace Pippin was the grandson of slaves. Pippin spent most of his adolescent years in Goshen, New York where he attended a segregated school until the age of fourteen. In 1917 Pippin enlisted in the army, and was sent to France to serve in WWI. While in France his right arm was shot by a sniper, leaving him partially paralyzed. Upon his return to the United States, he got married and began to practice pyrography (a process by which one takes a hot poker and carves into a piece of wood) in order to regain some of his strength for his true passion: painting. He learned to rest the poker (later replaced with a paintbrush) between his two fingers, and then he would use his left hand to move his right hand around. Pippin painted still-lifes, portraits and genre scenes of African American life, often focusing on important historical moments in the fight against slavery (often with a religious tone). He famously painted John Brown Going to His Hanging, 1942, which depicts abolitionist John Brown on his way to his death. Similar to french painter, Henri Rousseau, Pippin is considered to be a “primitive” artist. “Primitive” artists lack formal art training, and their works retain (what some describe as) a “childlike” quality to them. The beauty in these works is that the artist’s vision is not tainted by academic constraints; the artist has more freedom in subject choice, and how they choose to render it. Just as children have an untainted and pure view of the world, primitive art retains the artist’s true vision, without being molded by an Academy. In 1937 Pippin had his first solo show at the West Chester Community Center, an institution that provided cultural and social opportunities for marginalized citizens, especially African Americans. In 1938 Pippin was included in New York’s Museum of Modern Art’s traveling exhibition of folk art, titled, “Masters of Popular Painting.” In 1939 he was introduced to Robert Carlen, a Philadelphia gallerist, who became his art dealer, and by 1940 Pippin had reached the height of his success. Every year (from 1940-1946) he had an exhibition. He was shown at the Corcoran Gallery, The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art and the National Gallery, D.C. Horace Pippin died of a stroke in 1946. He left behind approximately one-hundred-forty paintings, and is the subject of the children’s book, A Splash of Red.