OLDEST BOY
Giclee (pastel)
2004
8" X 11"
edition 400

As a kid I watched and soaked it all in. The black children encountered in my Mississippi youth didn¹t seem bitter or angry or deformed though I was once told they were different; sons of Ham, his descendents punished for what he did to Noah. The faces and expressions and features were burned into my creative conscious as I revisited those emotions years later. To my surprise I was able to make the images speak on paper and to my even greater surprise, other people apparently could hear them too. This pastel of a local kid was part of a recent Civil War study and captured a glimpse of the eagerness and anxiety that young men going to war must feel.