George Washington Carver: The Patron Saint of Painting

On a recent journey to the southern United States with my grandchildren, I rediscovered a great American, George Washington Carver. He is best known as the scientist-botanist who discovered many practical uses for the peanut crop. George Washington Carver invented over three hundred uses for the peanut including flour, paste, paper, wood stains and antiseptics. With his innovations and agricultural research, he is celebrated for saving the agricultural economy of the South. What is less known about Carver is that he discovered a way to make household paint from motor oil and pigments that are found in the earth.

Carver was born into chattel slavery. On our visit to the Carver historical site, we learned that his mother attempted to escape to freedom with him in her arms, but she was caught. Slavers saw her baby as a valuable piece of investment property. As punishment for daring to steal herself and her son, the slavers took her infant George and then sold her to another master. Carver never saw her again. As an adult, the only connection to his mother he had was her bill of sale that he kept in his Bible.

With an incredible thirst for knowledge and education, and great empathy for poor people, especially black farmers who recently attained their freedom from slavery and had become tenant farmers, George Washington Carver became passionate about helping them live sustainable and dignified lives.  He became a world-renowned scientist and botanist and developed a color palette called “Rich Colors for Poor People”. Carver peddled his paints from county to county, showing farmers how they could make their homesteads beautiful with color-how to enhance and grace their homes with the dignity they deserved. He showed them how through beautiful paint their spaces could reflect their dignity and worth as human beings, as well as create an environment that fed their emotional and spiritual needs through beauty and color.

The contemporary spiritual writer Thomas Moore in his book Care of Soul describes the importance of the spaces we live in to the proper ‘care of soul’. Spaces that are beautiful and cared for are crucial in meeting our psychological, emotional, and spiritual needs as human beings. No one has to tell you the difference you feel when you are in a room or a space that is well cared for with paints and well-chosen objects versus one that is drab, tired, and cluttered- in desperate need of a makeover. The point is that caring for our spaces – our dwelling places – is a way to honor and respect our own needs for order, dignity, and beauty.

Thanks to George Washington Carver, the paints he created in such beautiful colors were a medium used to begin restoring the dignity of a people just out of slavery. It is important to understand that the law of the land, these United States of America, crafted and promulgated by our revered Founding Fathers and leading theologians, inscribed the legal and social status of black people as less than human, soulless and possessing no rights that any “white man was bound to respect.” Despite this proclamation and endorsement of these beliefs as basic tenets of American values, Carver dared to assert the dignity of all humans. He dared to assert the reverence for all of Creation. 

For his ministry to the poor and degraded of our land, we as a people, should be forever grateful. Carver was devoted to his quest. He understood how our sense of dignity and emotional peace is interdependent on our surroundings. He knew that everyone deserved to be surrounded by beauty. He worked tirelessly spreading the word of ‘care of soul’ and giving the poor access to dignity. Some of us are familiar with the belief that patron saints intercede on the behalf of and champion the needs of their charges. In this sense, Carver reflects the purest aim of a patron saint. Our mission is to bring ‘care of soul’ to our clients. As many of you have heard me discuss before, our well-being is influenced by our environment. A space that does not reflect or reverence our sense of dignity and mattering will make us feel faded and uninspired. We feel low when our surroundings are worn and tired. It is no small thing that we feel better inside when our spaces are clean and inviting. At The Larkin Painting Company, our mission is ‘care of soul’ and ensuring that surroundings reflect the true dignity of a person and nurture her or his well-being. I didn’t know it before my trip to his home, but we have the same mission and passion that George Washington Carver had all those many years ago. The Larkin Painting Company is forever inspired by him. George Washington Carver is our patron saint. I am deeply grateful that a journey South with my grandchildren revealed his spirit and mission to me.

Be well,

Bill