Portraits

My daily art project, 270 days in, has evolved yet again. I started making portraits of dogs, then a cat, and most recently, this human. I didn't expect, when I decided to try my hand at drawing a human face, that I'd land on this one. But this face has gripped my attention for the last two years, a face no more or less human than any other, though it's easy to lose track of that fact when emotions run high.

Jane Fonda got skewered in the media for her statements about having radical empathy for Donald Trump. No wonder. She's asking us to do a very difficult thing— extend compassion to a person who wields power in a dangerous, destructive way. She isn't asking us to condone or support his behaviors, she's asking us to see his humanity. "This is a man who was traumatized as a child by his father, who had a mother that didn’t protect him,” she said. “And the behavior is the language of the wounded.”