NO LOOKING BACK
Giclee (pastel)
2004
8" X 11"
edition 400

Many quiet hours were spent working on the Vicksburg monument. They were the most memorable and worthwhile time for me during the three year journey. In a sense, the figures ceased being clay creations of my imagination to become personalities with life stories all their own. They were representatives of a people, yes, but they had personal histories just as we all do. Who had owned their parents and had they been separated from them? It was a personal trauma I was all too familiar with. Separation. Not slavery. Had there been siblings they likely never knew and what of the motivation to sacrifice personal well being for a greater cause? I found himself there in my fatigue and excitement and creative energy struck by their sacrifice, not based on preserving a way of life, but creating a new one. In that same light, this pastel study reveals two young men who also know there is no going back.