Sloan Mitchell - Museum Visit: Nancy Elizabeth Prophet: I Will Not Bend An Inch (2-3 Points)

 

The Beauty of Imperfection in Nancy Elizabeth Prophet’s I Will Not Bend An Inch

   The first time I visited Nancy Elizabeth Prophet’s exhibit, “I Will Not Bend an Inch,” I was immediately drawn to her untitled watercolor pieces.  Watercolor has always been my preferred medium, so I felt a deeper connection with Prophet through them.  I love the way the brush glides across the paper, leaving behind a soft texture with every stroke of water.  I was enamoured with one piece in particular, the lonely yellow house, surrounded by two tall trees.

I was impressed by the calmness of the scene and the delicate beauty of the medium, which inspired me to give the piece my own title: The Beauty of Imperfection.

Prophet combined graphite, watercolor, and opaque watercolor to create the work, and it was beautifully flawed—smudged lines, gaps of missing paint, and faint sketch marks still visible beneath the color.  To me, the imperfection was its strength.  Unlike much of her work, where deep tones dominate, this piece used yellows, reds, greens, and browns that were softer in intensity yet still vibrant compared to her sculptures. 

     I lingered on the shadow cast by the tree on the right side of the house; its organic shape almost ghostlike, yet it gave the scene a striking sense of reality.  Or the red chimney, a darker hue compared to the rest of the painting, showed the lack of fine details, as there isn’t a single brick.  The lack of detail emphasizes the simplicity of the piece.

    Even so, I could feel a sense of movement running through the piece—the shadows across the trees suggest the wind brushing against the branches, giving life to a scene that otherwise seemed so still.

But with this artwork, I can also connect it to Prophet’s struggles with racism and sexism in the art world. The painting feels lonely compared to her other works—just a single house without any neighbors, lacking a sense of community due to the absence of neighbors. Prophet must have felt a similar isolation as the only Black woman in a white, male-dominated field, and this watecolor becomes a visual representation of that experience. Despite these challenges, Prophet stands as a powerful example of an African American woman who faces adversity and transforms it into her work. Through her sculptures, she tells stories of great warriors and leaders. At the same time, her landscape watercolors reveal the possibility of finding peace and contentment away from the weight of societal and systemic racism. Even though it took too long to give Black and Indigenous women their flowers, Prophet’s exhibit emphasizes that she will not bend an inch. Like in Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali, the characters Sassouma Bérété and Sogolon Kedjou ruled from the sidelines but were just as powerful. Prophet power is through her art.