Shotguns by: John Biggers

“Shotguns” is a painting that was done in 1987 by John Biggers. I like this piece of art work because it portrays how black people lived in the south after the civil war, and it also represents where I grew up as child. Shotgun houses are narrow, one story houses that have rooms usually lined up in a row. I like the piece because it gives an artistic view of the way if life in the past, but I can still relate it to how black people are living today. In some neighborhoods houses are still being built like this. Most documents and examples of shotgun houses are given from, examples of houses in New Orleans. There are houses like shotgun houses in every black ghetto, around the country, and not just in New Orleans. In my grandmother’s neighborhood, where I spent a lot of my time as a child, there are many of these houses and seeing a painting that is focusing on a common black way of life is touching to me.

In the picture there are many rows of these shotgun houses. The houses are behind a set of train tracks. These train tracks are symbolizing the common term “on the other side of the tracks.” This means on the other side of town that nobody wants to hear of, or have shown. They are like a cultural barrier, and back in the old days black and white people did not mix together. The front row of the houses has a different woman standing on each of the porches. The women remind me of the common term it takes a village to raise a child, and the way the houses are close also reiterate the fact that the communities in the south are close nit. Each of the women on the porches are holding a different type of house in their hands, maybe to symbolize how their house is all they have.

I do not necessarily have a favorite picture, nor do I really look at different pieces of art, but I do know that this piece of art moves me inside, because of the name and the view that it gives of the southern black community. This picture reminds me of how much I love the country and down south ways. I know everything in the south is nothing to be proud of, but I would rather live in the south with its rich history than live up north where people do not speak to each other, and there is not a sense of unity. The strength of the black women and Big Momma in the family I think is really shown in this picture.

The colors in the picture tell another story about the painting and what it is representing. There are dark and light shades through out the painting; it makes the picture interesting to look at. The coloring of the picture does not suggest that it is a sad or gloomy but rather, it gives the sense that the people in the picture have troubles in their lives, but still have good times. The rows of houses in the background are representing the rest of the neighborhood and how close they families are literally and figuratively.

All of these things about the painting that I have talked about have come from the stories that my grandmother and parents used to tell me about their neighborhoods when they were young. I think John Biggers was raised in an all black neighborhood and is probably portraying what he experienced growing up as a child.