Many years ago I was an artist working to capture my life story in paintings using old dolls and toys to represent the people in my life, my family — especially my father and grandmother who were both deceased by that time but whose influence has always been both overwhelming and confusing. My work was going on at the same time that we ended up under George W. Bush’s disastrous leadership, guided by Dick Cheney and James Baker III, and I was among many artists in Mobile, Alabama at that time who knew that the stories we were being told were not true.
There we were, in Mobile, Alabama, watching the wool being pulled right over our eyes. We could see it happening, knew that what we were being told was lies and propaganda, and were meeting in various places trying to get the word out that our media environment was not providing the truth to the majority of people.
It just so happened that I had a copy of a newspaper from 1991 where the first George H. W. Bush had boasted about how we would succeed — and the more I watched the more concerned I became about all the groups of people who were being ignored, suppressed, denied health coverage, rights, voices and so on.
This painting is the result of that experience and it was featured on DailyKos in several of my stories, back when I was writing as AlabamaLiberal. The original is acrylic on canvas and is now framed under glass.
Many people agree that it is one of the best paintings I’ve done and the subject has stood the test of time — in fact, the more I reflect on it the more I see in the original image.
I’ll leave you to contemplate the image. I need to sell it but what I’d like to do is use the prints of it to raise money for DailyKos, one of the best things to come out of that era of blogging and community activism. I used to blog as AlabamaLiberal, which I thought was clever, till it wasn’t.
I desperately need money to survive here in Alabama — I live on Social Security and the rent keeps going up, the media environment keeps changing and it has been hard for me to keep up with the technology and costs associated with that technology — which it turns out is a problem for many many seniors — if the conversations I’ve been having lately are any guide.
Oh, yeah. That soldier in the bottom of the image, in the tattered army fatigues? That represents my father, a victim of Cancer as a result of his exposure to Operation Tumbler-Snapper, in 1952. That my mother’s death from a very rare cancer in 1968 would likely also have been caused by that exposure.
The VA denied his claims for many many years, but after his death in 1991 I contested their decision and won, awarding his widow and two adopted sons the benefits he was not allowed to enjoy. Small victory, that.
Think of a better name for this painting. Come on, guys. Ya’ll are so clever...a song, perhaps?