After the 2016 election, as a way to calm myself, I re-read Walt Whitman’s poem, Song of Myself from his first collection of poems, Leaves of Grass (1850). There is something so loving and accepting and hopeful about this very American poem, that I wanted to use snippets underneath a vista I love on the Vineyard, a certain meadow on North Road in West Tisbury . I hope you’ll check out the poem (here) and these pictures–the original photograph, a few close-up snippets embedded in the painting, and the finished painting. Making this piece, confirmed my belief that, despite the worst impulses of mankind, humans can and do continue to write poems and make paintings.
