Oro Valley Public Library recently issued the following announcement.
Date and Time: Thursday, October 7, 2021
Description:
Artist Statement
Ta-Nihisi Coates’s 2016 Atlantic article, “My President Was Black”, depressed me profoundly. I read it as sounding the death knell for the racially just America I fervently believed in and had spent my life working to help achieve. I felt compelled to paint Obama’s portrait with the quote.
When I shared my painting with my peers, they said, “You didn’t have to tell us he was Black. We can see that he is.” That not one of them understood his quote was a lament astonished me.
So I painted this tiny series of civil rights advocates for two reasons:
I wanted to educate viewers about these often misunderstood patriots, and I needed to work through my grief that minority Americans must continue fighting for rights I received by merely being born White.
The improvement in my skills from my 2016 Obama portrait to my 2021 Malcolm Shabazz one is thanks to my painting teacher, Linda Ahearn, at Toscana Studio.
Original source can be found here.
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