Art exhibit at Kent House pays homage to Black history

Ransom Rambo’s painting entitled “Home Comfort” depicts a woman smiling as she sits in her rocker in front of a woodstove in her cabin. The painting is part of an exhibit featuring 50 years worth of work by Rambo at Kent Plantation House.

Ransom Rambo’s painting “Home Comfort” depicts a woman smiling as she sits in her rocker in entrance of a woodstove in her cabin.

“Look how she seems to be like she’s thinking of one thing pleased,” he mentioned. He details out the moon shining by the open doorway in the qualifications.

Rambo reported he was elevated by Black gals, specifically a single named Viola.

“I would go to her cabin and sit by her woodstove and she’d inform me tales about slavery,” he claimed.

“Home Comfort” is element of Rambo’s exhibit at Kent Plantation Property, 3601 Bayou Rapides Road. He does not like to explain to his age, but about 50 decades worthy of of operate are represented in the show, on screen till the conclude of March.

Among the operates are 14 portraits of Black historical figures, a collection called “Faces of Independence,” that he started out painting in 2011.

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The very first particular person he painted was Harriet Tubman, who was born into slavery and later on escaped. She became an abolitionist and served other enslaved people today attain flexibility through the Underground Railroad. A moon is in the portray because they traveled at night, Rambo reported.

“Of training course, you know how a lot of individuals she was dependable for obtaining to liberty,” he said.

Together with Tubman, he also painted portraits of singer Mahalia Jackson, Civil Rights activist Rosa Parks and inventor George Washington Carver.

“One of my favorites is Mahalia Jackson. Her strong convictions to not sing secular new music till the working day she died. I just have appreciation for everyone sticking to their convictions,” Rambo reported.

He was also taken with Rosa Parks’ story.

“The potent, solid character and the fact that she practically shut down the bus line with the boycott and established a change,” he reported.

Rambo was motivated by George Washington Carver following he viewed an interview Carver gave in the 1940s that aired on LPB.

Carver was humble and softspoken and normally wore a flower in his lapel, Rambo mentioned, a element he provided in his portrait.

Rambo explained he investigated the lives of the notable folks he painted for the reason that he needed to see what was in their minds, hearts and souls. He also wanted to seize the tragedies and hardships they confronted in addition to the pleasure they knowledgeable.

Faith is also featured in his perform, such as in the painting “Never Much too Late” which is of a baptism in a lake.

Some other paintings in the exhibit are from the collection of Tyrone Plantation, owned by Choose Rae Swent.

Rambo painted a collection referred to as “Purple River Base Land” on cypress peg doors that date to the 1820s from home on Tyrone. A person of the paintings that shows life on a plantation, “Hog Killing Time,” demonstrates a gentleman butchering a hog. “Big Sam” is yet another that attributes a guy reducing cane.

Amid his favorites from the sequence is “Sweet Goals,” which depicts a woman rocking a little one to rest. Two other individuals that he favors are of youthful women entitled “Young Rose” and “Justine.”

Memorial perseverance

To try to remember people “who labored, beloved, lived and died in the midst of oppressive slavery” at Kent Plantation Property, an Enslaved People Memorial was focused close to just one of the slave cabins.

The story of Kent Home is not only the story of the owners but also of people who were being enslaved, mentioned the Rev. Chad Partain, a Catholic priest who did exploration for the memorial.

“We hope and pray that the permanency of this memorial mounted in bronze will be a long lasting memorial to their memory and that we’ll hardly ever forget that the natural beauty of what we see all around us was sadly built on the tragedy of America’s primary sin, the sin of slavery,” reported Partain.