Pappy Kitchens and the Saga of Red Eye the Rooster

O. W. “Pappy” Kitchens (1901–1986) was born in Crystal Springs, Mississippi, and began painting at age sixty-seven. His self-taught, narrative, visual art springs directly from the oral tradition of parable and storytelling with which he grew up. A self-declared folk artist, Kitchens claimed, “I paint about folks, what folks see and what folks do.” His magnum opus, The Saga of Red Eye the Rooster , was painted between 1973 and 1976 and presents a homespun Pilgrim’s Progress in the form of a beas