Blog
Posted on 2/23/2022 3:36:42 PM
By Donald Fox
Comment on this
This is Black History month, and although it is important to recognize as well as understand the reasons behind its designation, it is more important to recognize that this history is continuous as a part of world history. The designated month should be a reminder that this is a shared history regardless of one’s race or cultural conditioning. There are many stories I could tell as a Southern American Caucasian male that make Black History part of my history, but now I choose to focus on one person I did know who will not be found in history books, a person who had a powerful, if unknown to her, influence on my life. Her name was Lizzie Thomas.
Visiting my father’s family in rural South Carolina near Charleston where I was born, I saw firsthand the blatant racism that was only slightly more subtle in the North Carolina town where I grew up. People were not all treated the same. Blacks were mostly sharecroppers who didn’t own land. They were kept on their side of the tracks unless they had specific work in the fields or the homes of the whites.
Lizzie was the first black woman I knew. She worked for my grandparents and did much of the meal preparation, cleaning, and washing. My grandparents were not wealthy by any means. They didn’t even own a car, but the gap between them and Lizzie was enormous. Though I didn’t know how to verbalize it, I could see that Lizzie was invisible within the household unless some task was required of her. I didn’t understand, yet I felt that something was not right.
Words that I had often heard uttered in anger were used to describe Lizzie’s race in her presence. News articles were frequent topics of conversation Sunday afternoons on the side porch where my family, local relatives, and my grandparents gathered. Many of the articles described the early stages of the civil rights struggle that would soon engulf the nation. But in this small town, the sheriff and his deputies pressured the black minister to keep his flock in line. Local merchants wielded power as well, for they could grant or deny credit. Since everyone knew everyone, unlike in a city, potential troublemakers were easy to spot.
Lizzie appeared undisturbed by the words flying around her. She served iced tea to those demeaning her people. She took her meals in the kitchen while we gathered around the great table in the dining room, a table that years later planted its heavy, carved lion’s feet in the tiny dining room of my parent’s house. The irony of this grand table in such a restricted space mirrors the grandiose delusions of small minds in many southern towns.
For some reason, Lizzie took a liking to me. Perhaps I spoke to her when others did not. I don’t remember. What I do remember is that she would save me the best pieces of chicken and give me the first taste of any cookies that she baked. We had some unspoken bond that I didn’t even realize until years later. By then it was too late for me to thank her.
It became important for me, therefore, to give back to Lizzie what I never had the chance to give to her when she was alive. On some level I hope that, as a small ignorant child, I did do something for her. As I grew older, however, I could choose to be sensitive to the feelings of others. I could choose to be tolerant and respectful regardless of race or any other differing factor.
What Lizzie demonstrated for me were the virtues of patience, tolerance, forgiveness, and gratitude. Her quiet strength taught me more than all the pious payers of relatives who said one thing and did another, who somehow could not see the hypocrisy of their daily lives. Lizzie embodied Christian virtues, and I am grateful that at my young, impressionable age I could know such a person. She was one of my first and best teachers. I carry her memory as a constant companion and friend.
Posted on 2/12/2022 6:46:01 PM
By Donald Fox
Comment on this
Light Breaks
Drawing has become for me an extension of imaginative thinking. There is an improvisational aspect to its execution although ideas may often precede the act of making marks. I work both in color with pencils or chalk and in black and white, usually with pencil and sometimes with chalk or charcoal. A dark lead pencil can be easily manipulated by varied pressure to graduate from light to dark. Erasure is also an important technique as it may obliterate, partially obscure, or smear a form to create a kind of mystique to an otherwise bold, geometric image or an aggressively expressive one. Most recent images are vignette-like in that they hang in ambiguous space rather than hold the frame edge to edge. My current paintings utilize the frame with elements that are internal echoes of the outer edges and play with the idea of windows or doors whereas the drawings are unbounded; I could even say unhinged from the edge. (The accompanying drawing is a kind of transition piece).
I spent many years as a student drawing from observation – nudes, still life, interiors, or landscapes. These drawings taught me perceptive and graphic skills that are now utilized in free expression. Perhaps I have become a jazz-inspired visual artist, for I do sense a rhythmic quality to line and find joy in improvisation. These days, if I do any drawings based on observation, my use of line is to explore the observed space rather than to delineate objects. Two very different artists influenced me in that direction years ago, Cézanne and Giacometti. The former often described planes in space with accumulated parallel lines, and the latter used meandering, continuous lines to create drawn spaces that are similar to wire sculptures.
Recent drawings are also leading me to new images that bear exploration in painting. This will mean translating graphic visual language into that of paint, surface extension, and color. This may be the beginning of the shift from windows and doors to new metaphors that I suspect are actually rooted in the past.
