Monday, December 16, 2013

Post Square 12.14.13 ~ A Story Too Sad

Post Square 12.14.13 ~ A Story Too Sad

The Washington Post periodically features a story as part of a series called Guns in America, which examines the “role of guns and the influence of the gun industry in the United States”.

Saturday’s article was about the 91 children under the age of ten who were killed by deliberate gunfire in this country last year.

Reading the story, I got as far as the sentence “Seventeen were shot by their mothers…”. That was when I thought I might not want to read the whole thing. Scanning further I found the chilling, clinical description of an autopsy on a “female child appearing consistent with the reported age of four years, measuring approximately 42” in length…” and I decided to stop.

It’s a long article.

The cover photo is of a beautiful boy standing in front of his grandmother’s house, waiting to go to church. One of the lucky ones who was only wounded. I searched this image for a long time before finding the piece of it I wanted for my drawing. It’s a section of a door frame on the house behind the boy. It made me think of a simple icon for a child. I stayed with the colors from the photograph.

The drawing measures a little under 4” by a little over 4” and was done in charcoal and colored pencil.

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