Take a Knee, Rural Communities and Our Ancestors in Solidarity with Black Lives Matter

This painting is from my recent exhibition, Gratitude: The Unrecognized Essential Workers Series at the R. Michelson Galleries. Included in this group of paintings that depict the various unheralded but much needed essential workers that have come into the spotlight during the COVID era is the burgoening protest movement, essential now more than ever. Perhaps the most impassioned of these essential workers, (and unpaid), they are the “Defenders of a Real Democracy”. They are formed by all of the diverse members and occupations of society and depicted most specifically in the paintings “Take a Knee: Rural Communities in Solidarity with Black Lives Matter” and “The 30th of May, 2020: Persecution of the Defenders of a Real Democracy.”