Artist Statements

Sympathy vs. Antipathy

Brush stoke by brush stroke to create memorials to loved ones juxtaposed with the upside down portraits of the sources of crude obscene madness and violence is healing for me and I hope that through these paintings, it gives an opportunity for reflection and solace to those who may one day stand before the completed works.

I am the Father of African American children, twins, a boy and a girl, I worry that harm may come to them. Abraham Lincoln facing a country torn apart as much as we are today stated: “…every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” This is my hope in my painting, that the world upside down will right itself.

Sympathy is being Negated by Antipathy It is a given that presently all life shall perish…to what purpose? My feeling is that we are here to Care for Others. Everyone experiences loss, it is our connection as human beings to have compassion, and empathy for another’s loss, and in instances of the pile of cases in which loved ones were brutally killed, unarmed Black women and men by white police officers, it is especially incumbant to respond with support and love. I endeavor to do this with portraiture of the dead as if they were my own family members, juxtaposed with the upside down disregard for the sacredness of life. We live in a broken world and it is our purpose to work towards healing. Brush stoke by brush stroke to create memorials to loved ones juxtaposed with the upside down portraits of the sources of crude obscene madness and violence is healing for me and I hope that through these paintings, it gives an opportunity for reflection and solace to those who may one day stand before the completed works.

The World Turned Upside Down

I use traditional portraiture which is rooted in my artistic origins as a boy, to express loss, particularly loss of loved ones, including the tragic loss of loved ones from racial injustice.
And this goes hand in hand with what I call “The World Turned Upside Down”, the “religious cult” of Trump, his clan and his sycophant followers and enablers, culminating in the attack on the US Capital to over turn the 2020 election and put the magamoniacal narcissistic sociopath back in power. I paint the portraits from my phone’s news feed upside down and never see them upside right, extrapolating from the scale of the cell phone to large scale canvases. I plan to place the upside down portraits in window frames mounted on the wall with wooden letters below the sill stating “the world turned upside down”, and the title of each representative image.

I picture a room of window frames with the upside down portraits representing all the madness that is a real threat to our country’s future. It is like the wicked witch passing across the window view that Dorothy sees in the hurricane of the “Wizard of Oz”, my wish is that all this passes away in the same manner. To alleviate the fear and anxiety I feel about our society…QAnon conspiracy, undermining our democracy, for a candidate to refuse to concede because any vote cast in favor of the opponant is considered a fraud, and there is the pathological liar creating a billion dollar “TRUTH” Social Platform, the bizarre continued promotion to reinstate, the large mass of heavily armed followers that espouse violence when not getting their way, and on and on…painting the upside down portraits dissipates the dread I feel of the approaching storm.