Original artwork description:

This is a portrait of John X who was an emancipated slave from the United States of America. The image comes from the 1920s and is held in an archive of images recording this period of time concerned with slavery.

The purpose of creating these paintings is to explore th epeople who have been lost to time or forgotten, filed away in another 'system', awaiting rediscovery by a future generation, in this case by me, where by I am creating a series of portraits of people linked to the personal project exploring Lost Generations from history to the present era.

I am exploring these images and creating this work for two main reasons:

1: Exploring my feelings about certain aspects of our past and its effect upon our present era

2: Exploring lost generations and revealing the obscured, forming portraits to keep alive the people of our past

Comes with the following poem extract:

America, it is to thee,
Thou boasted land of liberty,
It is to thee I raise my song,
Thou land of blood, and crime, and wrong.

It is to thee, my native land,
From whence has issued many a band
To tear the black man [woman and child] from his soil,
And force [them] here to delve and toil;’

James Monroe Whitfield
‘America’

Materials used:

Watercolour and Oil Painting on Watercolour Paper

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