Exhibition Catalog | Jacob Lawrence

CAT. 41
Carpenters No. 3
1981
Graphite on paper
23⁄ × 18 in.
2013.106
17. Clarence Major, “Clarence
Major Interviews: Jacob
Lawrence, The Expressionist,”
The Black Scholar 9, no.
3, Plastic Arts and Crafts
(November 1977): 18.
For much of 1981 Lawrence focused on
drawing. Carpenters No. 3 stands out
from its original set of ten because it depicts laborers
not at work, but sharing a meal around a table.
The heavy outlines of the three seated figures are
rendered through vigorous shading; dark shadows
also model the furniture and the tools crowding the
workbench in the background. The artist skewed
the perspective so that the flat surfaces of the bench
and table tip toward the viewer, revealing the objects
placed upon them. The careful detail in Lawrence’s
drawings of carpenters, such as this one, demonstrate
his preference for approaching his work as a
form of abstraction “in the sense of being designed
and composed,” rather than “in the sense of having
no human content.”¹⁷
118