I painted this for a show called Friends and Family and like here, it mirrored Anne Frank’s image, with 9/11 in the middle. I was thinking of course of all these hero victims, Matt Shepard being the young man in Wyoming who was found chain tied to a fence in Wyoming, a martyr for gay and LGBTQ+ causes. He was murdered for being gay and became a symbol and helped to expose the violence and homophobia still prevailing in society. This was an image taken by his best friend, the one who wrote her own memoir, Losing Matt Shepard, Beth Loffreda. She writes what seems an accurate account, that sometimes Matt could be a pain, but mostly he was a sweet guy.

He had grown up mostly in Wyoming and where he also went to college, after a short time living as an adult in Denver, Colorado, where I grew up. He might have been a methadone dealer, and was an intense, political guy who also had bouts of deep depression that he had been hospitalized for, and more. Two guys picked him up to rob him–pretending they were gay to rob him in their truck (although it was alleged one of them might have slept on and off with Matt), and after Matt put his hand on one of their knees, it sent them into a homophobic panic, and they ruthlessly beat him and left him to rot chained to a fence, only to be found by a jogger, who thought he was a scarecrow, a day or so later. Matt didn’t survive the brutal beating, but his legacy did.

Beyond the numerous plays, books, documentaries, and more, the Matthew Shepard Act against hate crimes like those against Matt was finally passed into law by Obama in 2009. In the late ’90s when this happened it was big news, as many hadn’t realized the persecution that gays receive, still today. I loved him while painting him, and loved that he was like a saint, but also a real gay young man with issues, that wanted to change the world, by journalism or otherwise, and did, despite the horrific tragedy in which it happened.