"Profiles for Democracy"
A group of 50 profile portraits, acrylic, mixed media and collage on paper, 36" x 24", 2019

"Profiles for Democracy" is a group of 50 profile portraits. They were an expression of sorrow at the fracturing ideals that I sensed our country teetered upon even in the year prior to the Covid pandemic. The portraits are mostly - but not exclusively - imaginary: a populace viewed from the inside out, people that someone like president trump might have called losers. They perhaps "live in gaudy poverty, powerful destitution," to quote Osip Mandelstam's poem included in my drawing of him - yet they endure. Exposed are the bitter roots of art buried in the night soil of our politics.

Scroll down to view a selection of portraits.

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