We the Disappeared (Ocean of Grief)

2025

36 x 36 x 1.5 inches

Acrylic paint on canvas

I've been deeply troubled by the current political climate in America. Namely, government agencies sweeping into communities and rounding up people in actions that amount to little more than kidnapping. Legal immigrants, illegal immigrants, green card holders and even U.S. citizens fall victims to these raids. Masked men without warrants, badges or other identifying documentation just grab people, cuff them, put them in unmarked vehicles and then take them to detention centers. Sometimes these people are then deported to countries or prisons without any notification to friends or family. They are literally disappeared. Thats where the series, "We the Disappeared" came from. For this particular painting, I imagined that feeling of loss. That feeling of not knowing. Both as a victim and as a victim's family, spouse, child, whatever. The grief. The despair. And so I started painting. With my hands. I wanted to feel the paint across the canvas, building up in layers like the silt at the bottom of seas. I piled on layer after layer, feeling the texture build. The fractured surface. And as I built those layers, the faces began to emerge. I roughed in some shapes with white--again, still using my hands. I didn't use brushes for this piece at all. It's just body and canvas. And then I alternated the blues and blacks pushing some of the faces into obscurity, pulling others to a deep and abiding sadness at the surface. The ones we can see. the ones we can't. I used water, too, soaking the painting's surface and erasing and reforming the faces over and over, in the painting's very creation the act of disappearance and replacement being visited on these people just trying to live their lives.

$900