“I paint the history of my people.” At once visual storyteller and vernacular documentarian, Clementine Hunter used her art to illuminate the complex racial and religious diversity of Louisiana. Inspired to pick up a paintbrush in her fifties, Hunter repeatedly transcribed river baptisms, the sacramental transition from sin to salvation. In depicting this liminal space, Hunter alludes to the symbolic connection between African American emancipation and the biblical flight toward freedom through the passage of water. In this example, Hunter compresses time and space, organizing the ceremonial procession into three horizontal sequences with each figure or object firmly resting on a ground line.
