Wade in the Water II

A wooden footbridge stretches across a slow country creek, and the whole church is standing on it. Women in white, men in dark suits, parasols tilted against the morning light. Below them, waist-deep in the water, the minister lifts his hand while a candidate waits to go under. This is Sunday morning in the rural South, and Ted Ellis painted it the way it was lived. Wade in the Water II holds a moment that generations of Black families know by heart. Before there were baptismal pools behind the pulpit, there were creeks and rivers, and the congregation walked out to meet them dressed in their finest. Ellis renders the scene in soft, broken brushwork, letting the trees blur into green, and the water hold a mirrored reflection of the crowd above. The color story is warm and unhurried: rust and cream, dark suits, white robes, a sky opening up over the treeline. Every figure on that bridge is a witness, and that is the heart of the painting. Faith here is a public act, held up by the community. The spiritual that gives this painting its name was born among enslaved African Americans in the antebellum South and first appeared in print in 1901, in a collection of songs performed by the Fisk Jubilee Singers. Its refrain draws on the Gospel of John, and the healing pool at Bethesda, where the waters were troubled by an angel, and its verses reach back to the Jordan and the Red Sea. Oral tradition also holds that the song carried coded guidance for freedom seekers on the Underground Railroad, instructing them to travel by water so tracking dogs could not follow their scent. Historians debate that claim, but what is well documented is the song's long life at riverside baptisms, and its return during the civil rights movement as a freedom song sung in mass meetings across the South. Ted Ellis, born in New Orleans in 1963, is a self-taught painter and former environmental chemist whose work blends folk art, naturalism, and impressionism. He has built his career documenting American life through an African American lens, from jazz clubs and church houses to the civil rights era and the presidency of Barack Obama. His portrait of the 44th President was presented in honor of the 2009 inauguration. Ellis has sold well over a million works, and his paintings hang in homes, universities, and corporate collections across the country. Bring Wade in the Water II home and keep that morning close. Add this signed and numbered limited edition to your collection today.