Venting

I have been so beside myself with rage and frustration for the past 48 hours since the "Supreme Six" made a travesty of the branches of government by handing over the very extraordinary powers to the office of the President that the founding fathers worked so hard to exclude from that person that I needed to find some way to work out the anger. The worst of it is that we all know that immunity is only given to cover the lawless and depraved acts of their sociopath of a candidate and that any attempt to use this so-called autonomy by the Democratic holder of the office would be a booby trap of epic proportions, even if that person could imagine using that immunity for self-interest or the partisan interests of his party, which he would not. It is truly unbelievable what they have been able to "accomplish" in the name of fascism and domination over a nation that does not espouse their views and does not want them as our rulers or arbitrators, simply by relying on our moral compass.

At first I thought to do a portrait of the three justices who stood strong, united in horrified dissent, and I may still do that at some point, but what I really wanted was to wreak my revenge on the six who betrayed us. And while working on it gave me some degree of satisfaction and relief, it is such a deadly serious subject that I couldn't do what I really wanted, which was to caricature them in a Deb Weiers-like portrait, as I have previously done with others from that side of the aisle. They look all too attractive and lifelike to satisfy my frustration. But I did manage to surround them with words of condemnation, revelation, and disgust, so there's that.

Here are the Supreme Six, or the Six of January Six, since their objective was to follow through on the intent of that day.

(Can I just say that I am particularly, overwhelmingly disgusted that a woman would choose to stand with these corrupt assholes against the interests of her gender? That I find the hardest to understand or digest.)

Uniball, acrylic ink, and watercolor, 16x12 inches on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress.

My intention was to parody them as I did the former architects of our destruction—McConnell, Cruz, and Graham—or a couple of hate-filled MAGA fanatics that I captured as they "protested" the good acts of the Democratic Party and let their own priorities be known.

Marking time

 I haven't felt too inspired lately, so I've been marking time by picking up on the projects of others and redoing them to suit myself. They haven't completely done that, but at least they have kept my hand in. This girl was a portrait that someone published on a Facebook page, asking for help with the likeness (a person new to portraits) and I decided that she was sufficiently arresting that I wanted to paint her myself.

The second is a challenge being put out there by Dana Primrose Bloede—she's posting one copyright-free image a month and asking people to paint the portrait and share. None of them have names on them, so I called him "This Guy." I enjoyed the darks and lights on this one, but I'm not a big fan of painting men's facial hair!

They are both 9x12 inches, painted on 90-lb. paper I bought for watercolor workshops, so not quite as clean as they would have been on Fluid.