Lost Dreams

For the last couple of years I have been volunteering to paint portraits for the Lost Dreams Project. This project, administered through the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, has artists paint portraits of children who have lost their lives through violence, mostly gun violence. The originals are given to the grieving families and prints of those paintings are displayed at anti-violence events. I've done about eight so far, including this sweet little girl. 

It's incomprehensible, really. How can we live in a place where children are being shot down in the street? While I was painting today, I was listening to the NPR coverage of the primary, and Barak Obama's triumph. I can only hope that we can change the culture in this country so that families don't have to lose their babies to gun violence.

I started working on another one today. The families often don't have great photographs for the artist to work from. I have photos of one 17 year  who has sunglasses on in one, is sleeping in another, and the last is an eighth grade graduation picture where he's squinting into the sun. I haven't figured out yet how I'll do that portrait. But today I began a painting of Darnell. He was 15. He was walking home from a relative's house a little after midnight. He was found in a 20th Street intersection with a fatal chest wound.

In this case, I have a photo of Darnell taken with a cell phone, and another one in which Darnell's face is quite small. Over the next several posts I'll take you through the process of painting one of these posthumous portraits, beginning with how I use the photographs the family provides.