https://collection.folkartmuseum.org/internal/media/dispatcher/1947/fullUntitled1981–1985[com.gallerysystems.emuseum.core.entities.RecordXPerson@10e6a]com.gallerysystems.emuseum.core.entities.RecordXPerson@10e6aEnamel and wood on MasoniteThe inspiration for this robust painting was a motor inn in Columbus that had been demolished some years earlier. Amazingly, the building’s two-hundred-foot smokestack survived. William L, Hawkins highlighted it by building it out with a compound of cornmeal and paint. Situated on an otherwise flat ground, the chimney lends texture to the whole, along with an element of surprise, something the artist always sought. Like many of Hawkins’s architectural paintings, Neil House with Chimney was executed in a flattened style with quick-drying enamels in a bright palette of red, yellow, and green against black and white. The stacked windows of various shapes, the stylized brick chimney, the scumbled sky, and the decorative painted frame create a certain ordered chaos—the painting bursts with energy, but all is under control. As always, Hawkins’s signature appears in the lower right-hand border along with the date and place of his birth—“Born KY, July 27, 1895.” View short documentaries about the artist at Ovation TV: http://community.ovationtv.com/_Schools-Out-Self-taught-Artists/video/516200/16878.html and Foundation for Self-Taught American Artists: http://www.foundationstaart.org/news_article.aspx?article=42" com.gallerysystems.emuseum.core.entities.Classification@418https://collection.folkartmuseum.org/objects/636/rdf