Portraits
I began making portraits of Peacemakers in 2008 while simultaneously working on a series of gunpowder & graphite drawings depicting images from wars in Iraq & Afghanistan. Some of the peacemakers are recognizable like the Dalai Lama, others are people I know personally. The Witness Series was a deliberate effort to find humanity in the faces of the Bush administration leaders who I saw as destructive. Lina, a more recent portrait, addresses immigration and the refuge crisis. Here a woman I know who is living nearby and fled from Syria is juxtaposed with and aerial view of Aleppo. This portrait is a companion piece to my video Forced to Flee: Lina’s Story.