Topic: Norman Rockwell

Watching history: Making “the dream” real

January 20, 2009 |

I awoke this morning from a dream, knowing that in a matter of hours I would be witness to a dream.

As President-elect Barack Obama takes the oath of office for the United States presidency, I find myself holding my breath, hardly able to believe that this reality. I find myself filled with pride.

I have no great expectations that he will be able to effect change, to immediately solve our country’s woes: I am a realist and the problems we face as a nation will take not months but years, possibly terms, to resolve and set right. I am ready for that.

I took time, though, to reflect on my personal history, remembering how the marches in Alabama and in Washington D.C. played out on that black and screen with the rounded edges, back in the 60s in the parlor of my blue-collar working class home.  I’d watched the dream of the Kennedy election and the horror of his assassination, I followed the civil rights movement, listened to the “I have a Dream” speech, and was caught up — I believe righteously so — in the passion and fervor of those times. I was part of the peace movement then, staunchly  anti-war and pro-human and civil rights. Nothing’s changed. «Read the rest of this article»

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Through the Looking Glass: an introduction to the world of artist Judy Lewis

By Curtis Davis | August 28, 2008 |

In "King of Spades" (17 X 23, 2008), Lewis’s most recent work embodies her aesthetics and ideals as an artist that anyone can have their portrait done, and shows her flare for detail while capturing the innermost essence of her subject, a trait she shares with regional portrait artist, Billy Price Carroll. Featured here is Ryle.

Though Monet said, “My life is useless,” artist Judy Lewis disagrees with this statement, though she can see how Monet may have felt this way. “It is a tough life to live struggling to make a living as an artist because you feel such desire and passion. If you look at art history, many artists lacked the customer base to feel appreciated during their lives,” according to Lewis, a native Clarksvillian.

Lewis, a devoted mother, has one daughter, Keegan, from a previous marriage and has lived in Clarksville for the majority of her life. In addition, Lewis has done work in Texas, and recently returned from Gettysburg, PA.  Lewis has been steadily producing art work sometime after, Art Cantu, a Christian minister from south Texas, witnessed to her, and sparked a hope in her that she could achieve her dreams. At this point in her career,  Lewis has done over 300 exhibit-worthy pieces, and continues to produce more art every day, not counting numerous drawings.

Of late, Lewis has delved into painting oils and acrylics with a style and color technique as unique and original as her drawings. The painting, Phoenix Rising on Angel’s Wings, captures the colors of a young girl and her gallant horse, Angel, as they properly go riding across a verdant field. Her vivid brush strokes in Christmas Carriages on Franklin Street capture the light and color of night lights downtown during a Christmas extravaganza. «Read the rest of this article»

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The Four Freedoms: More relevant than ever in a time of war, a quest for peace

November 22, 2007 |

Freedom from want

As we enter this Thanksgiving Day, we are drawn to thoughts of hearth, home , family and family of the heart.

Though the faces, the hairstyles, the clothing may seem old-fashioned, the Norman Rockwell painting, Freedom from Want (at left) exemplifies what most of us see as the perfect Thanksgiving: a table laden with food, our families intact, disagreements set aside, and our dreams and despair shunted aside for a brief hours of well-nourished peace and companionship.

The painting is classic, and rooted in a yesterday that too soon become a grim reality. It is the height of irony that as we sit down to our Thanksgiving dinners today, the Four Freedoms articulated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt have resurfaced as the very issues for which wars are being fought. The Four Freedoms were first spoken by Roosevelt on January 6, 1941, in a State of the Union address to Congress just eleven months prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor — our “Day of Infamy.”

In what has become known as the Four Freedoms speech, Roosevelt designated four benchmarks of fundamental human freedoms everyone “everywhere in the world” ought to enjoy:

1. Freedom of speech and expression
2. Freedom of every person to worship in his own way
3. Freedom from want
4. Freedom from fear

He took his belief beyond the Constitution and its first amendment protections, extending this ideal as a model for humanity. This endorsement of rights to economic security, this international perspective on foreign policy are now central tenets of American liberalism. «Read the rest of this article»

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