I created this painting for the show Kings & Queens as I realized that many of my works would “employ” famous personas for their positive historical baggage and weight, but when I painted someone who truly had a major impact on the culture, the feelings it conjured within me were powerful and I learned something while painting, in addition to creating something of a history painting that not just recorded a moment, but hopefully brought a life to the moment full of feeling and energy. I’m a big believer in bringing more strong female protagonists to my work and to art and art history in general and am consistently inspired to paint women in these roles, although of course I could always do even more.

Eleanor Roosevelt has always been an incredible figure to me—not only was she one of the most powerful first ladies, but it’s quite possible she was a lesbian, or at least bisexual, and long after her husband was gone she continued to be a force in America. She was so instrumental, in her columns that she wrote and in her personal life as a public figure, that when JFK was running for president, he had to get her approval to win, although she had been backing Adlai Stevenson. Kennedy went to her cottage Val-Kill and brought along his assistants as he “didn’t want to be alone on the raft at Tilsit,” referring to the historic meeting between a great Russian and Prussian who met on this river between Germany and Russia, post-Napoleon in about 1823 where they proceeded to divide up Europe and destroy Poland. The meeting, a tuna fish casserole lunch, proved to be very successful, and at the end, JFK had her support (along with a lot of motherly advice) and he went on of course to win the presidency.

Part of the challenge of working from black-and-white photos is to invent the color, which I did here, inspired, too, by my own memories of our cabin home in California, and the warm feeling that the image generated in me, full of hope and aspirations, the legacy of one great leader passing the baton to the next, with some-thing that looks like a Matisse painting in the background!

As usual, I listened to audiobooks about Eleanor, the Roosevelts, her and her husband’s legacy and JFK’s, and learned much about the foundation of our contemporary view of women’s rights and how they were helped along by her, and how much of our current times had been productively created by these great Americans.