Twenty-six years ago, when I was twenty-nine, I was working at the Community Mercantile as produce manager and just beginning to make murals. At that point, I really hadn’t figured out how I wanted them to look - what visual language would best suit my skills and aspirations. I poured over images of Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros’ murals and tried to imagine myself in their shoes. It was tough. Their mastery felt unapproachable. Searching for inspiration, I would spend evenings at the library hoping something would catch my eye. One night, it did. I pulled “Jacob Lawrence: American Painter” off of the shelves and immediately was struck by the cover.
I had known Lawrence’s early work like his Migration Series from the 1940’s, but I’d never seen what he made later. I checked out the book and began working on drawings inspired by Lawrence’s images of builders and families. Later, I would learn that one of Lawrence’s heroes was Orozco. It made sense. Of the Tres Grandes, Orozco’s approach was closest to Lawrence’s, and it turned out that they had even met once while Orozco was working on a mural at MoMa. Adapting my drawing style felt awkward at first, too imitative and not enough my own. It took time for me to find my own way of seeing shapes within a form and using color not only to describe an object, but to create a feeling and sense of place.
The real test came when I was asked to lead a new mural project for the annual Harvest of Arts Festival in downtown Lawrence. The theme was “celebration of cultures.” Painted with dozens of volunteers in October of 1995, it was the first mural I’d made after incorporating my studies of Lawrence. Last week, I brought it back to life with a fresh coat of paint.
