Subway Car Interior
Within the last few days, the killing of a black man by a white policeman and the riots that followed, showed us that we have spent our lives surviving crisis after crisis, and bit by bit finding partial answers........but now we cannot wait.
Now nature added its Crisis, the Corona virus, which sees us all as potential victims.
We need to change in how we “see “each other. We can no longer afford to wait. I will use this painting to try to teach us how to see each other as “us “and not as “them.”
I am making sure that this painting will reflect that we are all different from each other, but as in this subway car, we occupy the same space.
My aim is to change our way of seeing each other. I will do it through the people in this painting. We have Christian, Muslim,Jewish, black, white, brown, Asian, handicapped, healthy, old, young, homeless, well-dressed, or poorly dressed, transgender, fluid gender, and different from the titles of male and female (as we once counted as the only recognized ones) and they are all within the same space. And we are in the same space on this planet, which has been hit by a virus which is killing people, as if all of us were a common enemy. And it seems to me as if the main reason behind our cruelty to each other is fear.
My paintings were done during sitting on sidewalks, and painting the people in their neighborhoods. Because each canvas took so long, and people became used to me, I became recipient of so many personal stories, and through listening I realized the fear that so many of us carry. And I see how often that fear leads to prejudice and cruelty.
But in all neighborhoods there is a similar ingrained fear of the newcomers, and we are a nation of people who have fled from where we were born, fled or captured, and yet those similar fears exist in people who are in countries where the same generations were born and died.
Then perhaps we need to realize how far we have come. Now there are unions, orphanages. organizations which help people in need, and above all, people who identify a problem and create an answer for them. I have met so many and have written about them.
Let us begin to see everyone as “us”.