Meredith Morris and the art of political art

One of rarest talents in art is to be able to float around different corners of the sensory scene that is everyday living and use the skills of being an artist to observe, create, and deliver a work of art that makes an impactful statement.

Art with political footprints is one of the more difficult and abused genres of the visual arts empire; it can quickly fall into heavy, Soviet-style fascist dogma, or even worse (in the eyes of some – not me) into illustration.

Then there’s that astonishing moment when a work of fine art catches not only a moment in history (think of Goya’s Third of May 1808), but fills your brain with reactive thoughts and senses, and suddently, places you there, alongside the subject of the work.

Meredith Morris has done that and more with the below masterpiece – she notes about it:

When I went into the streets in 2017 to protest the first election of Donald Trump I had already started a series of paintings inspired by his dehumanizing rhetoric that I named No Labels. This painting, Long Time Coming was an image I took from that day of a black man wrapped in the American flag marching in a sea of mostly white women. The image was powerful and stuck with me making me reflect on the promise of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s that I experienced growing up in segregated Georgia as a white girl. The Civil Rights fight made a lasting impression on me and my own family history played a roll there but that’s another story. Long Time Coming is a line in a song by Sam Cooke entitled A Change is Gonna Come.  I purposefully made the background abstract and chaotic to reflect the current political and social situation. However, there are some trees showing through that I leave to the viewer to interpret. This is a painting that asks questions of humanity regarding justice and equality and how long a people should have to wait for those things.

Behold “Long Time Coming” by Meredith Morris, oil in canvas, 2020, 40×30 inches.