Olive, 12x16 oil on canvas

 

I enjoyed this commission for a dog portrait. This regal photo of the late beloved dog Olive was such a nice pose. 

Carmen

Rosa Parks, 9x12 Graphite Drawing

On December 1,1955 in Montgomery, Alabama Rosa Parks refused a bus driver's order to vacate a row of four seats in the "colored" section in favor of a white female passenger who had complained to the driver the white section was full. She was arrested and subsequently became central to the year-long bus boycott in Montgomery. In her autobiography, My Story, she said:

"People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."

^Carmen

Frederick Douglass, 9x12 Graphite Drawing

Continuing my series of Civil Rights heroes, here is my rendering of Frederick Douglass, who escaped slavery and became a leader of the antislavery movement. He was a great writer and an orator who was much in demand. In describing his childhood, he wrote this:

    "The opinion was also whispered that my master was my father; but of the correctness of this opinion, I know nothing...My mother and I were separated when I was but an infant. It is a common custom, in the part of Maryland from which I ran away, to part children from their mothers at a very early age....I do not recollect of ever seeing my mother by the light of day. She was with me in the night. She would lie down with me, and get me to sleep, but long before I waked she was gone."

What an amazing spirit he had to overcome beatings, dehumanization and loss of his mother to become one of the most respected intellectuals of his time. He credited finding faith in God when he was a teen with bringing him out of his despair.