Marginal People
“And then one day I got a true look at the poor; millions of the poor, patient and toiling . . .” Carl Sandburg, “Masses” from Chicago Poems, 1912
Only from a distance. That is how we view the homeless and disenfranchised that we pass on the streets and see in alleyways, every day. We do not look at them. They disappear into the bricks and the cracks; they become part of the scenery.
They are our brothers and our sisters, and they mirror our own nobility but also show our degradation and disentitlement.
I am not presenting spectacles to spectators rather, I am portraying real persons so that we can see the truth of what exists in our society and our world . . . much of it, the truth beneath the surface.
My concern for people who have been marginalized started many years ago with all I saw through my travels around the world. Here, in Los Angeles, there are too many homeless individuals to count. It always upset me, and it was too difficult to talk about . . . it became easier to draw. So, I made sketches and from these depictions, I painted the marginal people I observed.