Chareston Murders and Art Healing

The murders of 9 precious life's in my home city by deranged Dylan Roof began a healing process of grace and dignity for the nation to witness. Calhoun Street where Emmanuel Church sits, is a street where I was born, where my two sons were also born and also attended school near to the church; it is where our library and city auditorium hosts events. It is a gateway street connecting the peninsula by neighborhoods, shopping and businesses. It is also a neighborhood where life long friends live. One block from the church lives my dear friend whose neighbor was Miss Susie Jackson, and  Miss Susie's nephew Twanza, two of the nine. When she and I walked over to pay our respects in front of the church, a feeling came over me that weakened my knees and jolted me toward feelings of fear, compassion and strength all at once.

Looking at the alters of flowers and letters, I felt like a child again in the 60's as I recalled being just down the street at the Webb Crippled Children's Center. In my teenage years, I volunteered weekly to help the little afflicted ones play games and learn motor skills. All walks of life, all colors, all brought to this place of healing and forgiveness just like Emmanuel, crippled from tragedy. My handicapped sister was one of those young children in the '60's who benefited from Mr. Webb's benevolent school. Charleston has always been to me a city of compassionate and positive people defining grace and character. I learned this early on when people defined me as an artistic type giving me permission thru positivity, their coaxing me to draw and paint starting my confidence painting backdrops for church props for our children's plays. There is little knowledge of my city being defiant and resisting to me, nor to act out negatively toward violence. I remember Martin Luther King marching toward Emmanuel to speak in 1961, there was no résistance. I was too young to understand, but looking back, he was welcomed as his widow later was in the 60's. Peace was a word that coexisted with Charleston, as is compassion, unity, acceptance, tolerance. Maybe it started after the Civil War from its emotional and tumultuous ending. Yes, the war started in Charleston, and it is my hope it ended with Charleston as well. Especially since Governor Nikki Haley signed the order to take down the Confederate banner from our state house just 23 days after the bible study murders.

The banner flag was a declaration of a geographical area that symbolized the area ones were proud to be from, but it unfortunately became adopted by hate groups that tainted the banner flag. Going to and from our city to do daily business, there was and always is a blanket feeling of trust, and of tolerances. Charleston has always come together in times of need and unity. It is peaceful and tolerant, Mayor Riley led the path to fairness to do the right thing, now and since his election in 1975. From this home city came my desire to paint my feelings. From this feeling of compassion came my life long art passion.

It is with honor I donate this painting and another like it to benefit Emmanuel's family of victims. This semi-abstracted piece is being donated for a show/sale on November 9-13, 2015 at the newly renovated Cigar Factory in downtown Charleston for the victim's families of the 9 murders. It is still hard to say that word associated with Charleston, but these lives will be honored in so many ways. I am to be a small part of it.  The Cigar Factory is an awesome structure near the healing historic church that has been restored into businesses, offices and eateries. For years our family business used part of it for storage. It was old, damp, but solid to store our wines for our restaurant. From ruins comes greatness in a structure of new life. That is what Emmanuel and the city is feeling. The art auction benefit will be in the Garden and Gun Magazine offices, by their generous offering up. Artists for Emmanuel are uniting this. Artists care and know healing. I do know this.

The Charleston unity from this crisis is so touching. The enabling of the victims to directly forgive from their speeches to that madman is healing us. Our nation needed to learn this tolerance. The ability to paint for forgiveness is healing me. I feel art heals. It heals my emotions. It heals me more each time I paint a good painting. And surprisingly, it heals when I paint a stubborn painting. It heals the one that gets that emotion rom observing the painting, and that emotion transfers from me to them. the new owner hangs it in their home. Everyone becomes connected from the painting. The story is there from artist to buyer.

For me, in giving this painting pays it forward in breaking a cycle of intolerances. I still need art to heal. And every piece I create and sell is my accumulated contribution to satisfy this need. In my lifetime, I have lived in an area of tolerance, co-existing with flags, with all races, all denominations, all choices of lifestyle, all bodies standing or in wheelchairs, all southerners as well as the northerners who moved to Charleston and adopted my city. Some come intolerant of Southern traditions, learned slowly, and others come willing to be adopted southerners. That being said, We shall all overcome to heal, be it ourselves and our city. Art does heal.

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