why I paint portraits

I have not written for my own journal in a while. I have gone on painting portraits, but putting in words my outrage at the continuing wars, the lying and hypocrisy about them, the BP oil disaster, the failure of our government & most others to even try to curb the serious climate crisis has left me speechless. Is it my mother's voice telling me that if I can't say something nice, don't say anything at all? No. It's the sense that many people are stating the problems well, but they are not being listened to. I needed to think carefully about what to say next, what is worth saying while continuing to paint.
In the meantime the on-line branch of YES! Magazine asked me to write an essay for them about why I paint the portraits. YES! uses them in its curriculum. They were only able to print 1000 words. I thought it might be worth while to share the original essay.

YES! Article/ Americans Who Tell the Truth portraits

“The most alarming sign of our society now is that our leaders have the courage to sacrifice the lives of young people in war but have not the courage to tell us that we must be less greedy and less wasteful.” --- Wendell Berry

I did not want to paint these portraits. Over 25 years I had built up a career as a surrealist painter – enough of a career to pay my bills, work full time, and, it seemed to me, fulfill my obligation to society as an artist. It was an obligation I defined in terms of exploration into the mysteries and ambiguities of the human predicament. I had never painted a portrait.

Then September 11, 2001… then a war launched not against the perpetrators of the crime but against the country of Afghanistan where they ( Saudis and Egyptians) had some training bases… then the blatant and purposely false reasons promoted by our government for the pre-emptive war on Iraq. My sense of obligation as an artist changed.
I could not live with myself unless I used what I do best to expose the lies, to try to tell an honest history, to provide role models --- not of the myths of U.S. exceptionalism, but of citizens who struggled for justice --- and to provide hope by offering stories of courage. I wanted to reclaim my own freedom in the way Utah Phillips once put it: “The degree to which you resist injustice is the degree to which you are free.”

However, I had no idea yet of the portrait series. Mired in anger, grief, cynicism and shame, it seemed that those were the feelings I needed to express in art. But where do those feelings most often lead except to more of the same? How to use those feelings to do something positive? I ended up being guided by shame --- a very isolating and debilitating emotion. I thought --- why do I spend so much time agonizing over my shame for this country? Why don’t I surround myself with people who make me feel proud, people who have insisted that this country live up to its own professed ideals about inalienable rights, equality and justice? Why don’t I invoke their spirits by painting their portraits? The portraits became my way of using negative emotions in the service of positive, anger in the service of love.

We are the stories we tell ourselves. I was fed up with the stories of U.S. entitlement --- the greatest democracy on earth, the most blessed by God, the most powerful, its people the most virtuous. Why all this arrogance? Why no humility? Why do we think these things are true? Do we do our children any favor by teaching them to become actors in this pageant of superiority? Implicit in the myths of our exceptionalism is still the story of Manifest Destiny, that our virtue entitles and justifies our actions no matter how despicable in terms of cost to other people and environments. It’s a myth that says because it’s our might, it is right. It says my country right or wrong because my country is never wrong. Manifest Destiny justifies and makes a positive ethic of collateral damage.

At the same moment that I got the idea to paint the portraits, I knew that the words of the subjects had to on their portraits. The statements being made about various forms of justice had to be literally spelled out. These aren’t just people in paintings looking at you. They are people imploring you to listen and act. I scratched the words into the surface of the paintings rather than painted them on as a metaphor about commitment.

I wonder why we need to tell ourselves stories that set us apart from the rest of mankind, stories of power and domination. It seems to me that our nobility as a people has been discovered --- and continues to be --- through the courageous insistence of our own people that our country fulfill its own promise. Not in how we subdue others, but in how we subdue our own worst tendencies to racism, sexism, classism, and environmental degradation. Our revolution did not end in 1787. Because, at the signing of the Constitution, we did not free the slaves, give political rights to freed African-Americans, Native-Americans, women, the disabled, or poor whites, our revolution was just beginning. I decided to paint portraits of some of the people who had fought to extend rights to everyone. It was a story not about America being its own reward, but about a reward continually needing to be earned.

I do not want to paint celebrities. Nor do my subjects desire to be perceived as such. Celebrities are people the culture idolizes for their disproportionate wealth, power and fame --- people made huge so that the rest of us can feel small and unworthy. My intent was the opposite, to portray real, ordinary people whose persistence and courage changed their own lives and provided role models of all of us. “Without courage,” William Sloane Coffin said, “there are no other virtues.” Any person, adult or child, acting with courage for justice, becomes a teacher, becomes a light in the darkness, encourages all of us to become our own lights. Just as fear is infectious, so is courage. Think of Sojourner Truth, the illiterate ex-slave, who became one of the greatest leaders for women’s rights and the abolition of slavery. Today we remember and admire her, not her rich white owner. Which one do we think of when we want to understand the meaning of America? It’s not about celebrity, social status, money or privilege. It’s about courage. Ordinary courage. Colonel Ann Wright’s resignation from the diplomatic corps in protest of the illegal invasion of Iraq was not to make herself a celebrity. She resigned to better defend the Constitution that she had sworn to protect. She had not sworn to protect illegal policies of elected leaders who betrayed the Constitution. Her resignation took a lot of courage. Think of Rachel Carson, dying with cancer, refusing to be intimidated by the chemical companies who were using all of their power to humiliate and discredit her when she exposed how their chemicals were poisoning the natural world. What a debt we owe her courage!

Painting the portraits of people such as these has given me the opportunity to tell their stories to children and adults. Their stories both authenticate the experience of people in unjust situations now and show them the way forward. And in teaching how to struggle against injustice, we also must teach about why there is so much injustice.
Slavery continued after the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, after the recognition of inalienable rights and the necessity of democracy being built on equality. Why is that? We discover that enlightened, otherwise idealistic people, will sometimes fail to live up to their own ideals when their source of profit and power is lodged in the old evils. As Frederick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” He also said, “Find out what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong that will be imposed on them.” For me, those two quotes explain all we need to know about the interests of power and the necessity of citizenship.

When I began painting, I had a goal of 50 portraits. I never expected to reach it. I also expected that no one would care what I did, whether I reached that goal or not. I envisioned a stack of portraits in my attic that made me feel better. Now there are 150 portraits. They travel to schools, colleges, libraries, museums, and community centers all over the country. Painting time is now a luxury because of my schedule talking, teaching, and giving workshops. I teach about history, ethics, and citizenship. I would not classify my decision to give up my former artistic career to paint these portraits as an act of courage, but I would call it an act of defiance, of resistance, of refusal to accept a lie as a patriotic reason for war, of refusal to accept that a country that allows a presidential election to be stolen is the greatest democracy on earth. The portraits are an affirmation that only persistent courage and citizenship maintain our ideals. If we want to define the destiny of this country, but more properly, the human enterprise, as a movement toward enlightenment and justice, we have to accept the responsibility of making that happen.

I felt a great sense of freedom when I began to paint the portraits --- the same sense of freedom that is available to anyone who chooses to act for a good cause. That freedom was magnified by another decision --- made before I had painted even the first portrait --- that I would give away the entire collection. I knew I would be painting people who had in effect donated their time on earth --- often risking, and giving, their lives --- so that this country might be more equal, just and honest. My effort had to be a metaphor for those lives. Knowing that I would not sell the portraits freed me to say whatever I thought to be true. Before I began painting the portraits I felt blessed to be part of an exciting artistic community. The portraits have allowed me to be part of a community of people struggling to fulfill the promise of our ideals. Anyone can choose to be part of this community and be welcomed into it.

We are often told that time may alleviate grief. That’s true. But time will not rectify injustice. People have to do that. A government will not often correct injustice unless forced to by its people. When the people do not act to protect their rights and futures, time allows privilege and power to entrench and rigidify the status quo.

Marion Wright Edelman, head of the Children’s Defense Fund, said, “What’s wrong with our children? Adults telling children be honest while lying and cheating. Adults telling children not to be violent while marketing and glorifying violence. I believe adult hypocrisy is the biggest problem children face in America.” I have repeated that quote to students of all ages all over this country and have yet to find a student who disagreed with it. What most students have not thought about is why it is true --- that our society, when forced to choose between care for its children and exploiting them for profit, often chooses profit but can’t admit it. That situation will not change until the people demand that it change and until teachers have the courage to teach the truth about our history, that democracy is made possible not by capitalism but by citizenship.

Painting the portraits has been an enormous education for me. I did not know my own history, nor did I understand the forces that drive it --- backwards & forwards --- until I began this process. As its pain and injustice are oppressive, so, too, its joy and courage in the struggle for justice are inspiring. Cynicism about hypocrisy and corruption seems a rational response to our situation today until one studies the life of John Lewis, Alice Paul, Diane Wilson, Bill McKibben, Dahr Jamail, Lily Yeh or so many others. It’s daunting to oppose the forces that prefer war, daunting to oppose the forces that prefer economic hierarchy, daunting to oppose corporate media and the control that corporations have on the political process, but it’s also exhilarating. And it’s right.