Dear Friends –

I have been painting all my life, and I am now 73.  Not sure when I first picked up a paint brush but it was a long, long time ago.  It has served me well.  I paint when I’m happy, when I’m sad, and Most of all I paint when I am feeling helpless -- as many of us are right now.

The act of moving color on canvas never fails to make me feel better and therefore helping others learn how to do it has been my call for decades.  Especially young ones. They learn the best and my hope is that they take this mood-improving, mind-clarifying skill with them wherever they go.

So this was the basic premise behind this painting, my self portrait, which I started immediately before the horror and murders in Minneapolis. So much pain, fear and grief inflicted by ICE, Border Patrol and the trump Regime! The image of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos being held with an ICY grip on the hood of his jacket, his face full of fear, is seared in my memory.  I want to hold him, help him, give him the tools that I know of to overcome this trauma.   

But I cannot. So I make this painting of me and little Liam and lay out my hope that the terror of trump ends soon and we can all begin to heal.

 

margie lopez read

Stay well.

Margie Lopez Read

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