“Protesters stand outside the Statehouse Atrium, where reporters listen during the State of Ohio’s Coronavirus response update on Monday, April 13, 2020 at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio. About 100 protestors assembled outside the building during Gov. Mike DeWine’s weekly update on the state’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, upset that the state remains under a Stay-At-Home order and that non-essential business remain closed.” Joshua A. Bickel, AP photographer for the Columbus Dispatch covering a protest outside Ohio governor Mike DeWine’s daily press briefing.

It was intense and edifying to work on this–the reflections of the image were incredible–so many flags, and so different than what is happening in the windows themselves, almost like a a bittersweet, sad, reaction to the hypnotized protestors… I kept thinking of the people in the gas chamber/”showers” in the holocaust–but these people have been brainwashed and/or self chose to be gassing themselves outside (to infect others?!) and the alarming disarray of their mayhem. It came looking like a Munch or Ensor work in its way, which I guess was to be expected given the subject manner, but I hope there is a lot of my own perception and feeling in these contemporary times. I wanted not to make a mockery or caricature of these people–I kept thinking they were someone’s mother or father–the woman on the left window was actually running for the Ohio state senate and lost, thankfully! Goya is my guiding light, as when he was painting his royales he didn’t want to mock them, I think it’s harder to portray people as they really look and have the viewer decide for themselves how they feel about the subject–Goya’s Charles the IV of Spain and his family look very different to our eyes than they did when he painted them…

On the last day of the R.N.C., with the justified protests in Wisconsin and the murders, Hurricane Laura and more, the news is looking more and more like a Black Goya painting, these Trump Zombies could easily be in the caravan in one of his paintings at the Prado, I hope that we survive this moment for a better future for our nation and world.