Art that calls for a response

My sister and I went to an art show a couple of weeks ago. My friend Craig R Norton was showing some of his paintings. His work is beautiful, but not in the way you would think. He has a way of capturing emotion in people's faces that is very moving. One painting in particular captivated me for some time. It was about the genocide in Rwanda. The faces of two individuals in the painting will be etched into my brain for a very long time.

The first was an older African woman, her face was distorted with pain, agony and grief. I can only imagine what must have been going through her head. Knowing that she would probably die, but also wondering how callously men could slaughter her whole family one by one in front of her. Seeing her hopes for her children and grandchildren snuffed out like the wick of a candle, in an instant. She must have thought at one point that she would grow old in the care of her family, helping her daughters take care of her children. Telling them stories of her childhood. Of how her mother would make her favorite food or that special way she would wash the clothes by hand. Her dreams were for others and she knew what was being lost.

The second was a little boy, not more than five or six, standing in the street crying. He doesn't know much about why his family is hated so much by the men who are killing them. He is ripped out of his mother's arms while she is screaming in terror, when he realizes he has to run for his life. He runs down the street, two blocks away he still hears her screams, then they stop. Fifteen minutes later he finally stops running, his lungs are about to explode. He stops in the middle of the street, nobody sees him because they are in the middle of their own fight for survival. Alone in the street he stands paralyzed by fear and confusion, tears streaming down his dirty cheeks, he is now an orphan, but he doesn't know it yet.

In the painting there is a bubble coming from the little boy's mouth, the kind that are in comic books, it talks about the ethnic cleansing that happened in Rwanda and how so many people were brutally killed in just days.

I stood there reading this for a good ten minutes, I had an idea of what went on but I didn't know any of the specifics. As I continued reading I remembered Ginny, a nineteen year old girl from Rwanda who stayed with my family for almost a year. She was a refugee who came to the USA with her sister after this horrible event. When she moved in with us we were told that she had no idea where the rest of her family was, but that they were probably dead. Most of the time she just stayed in her room and watched TV, I never understood why she never came out. Now I had a whole new perspective on what she must have seen and experienced, I was a little ashamed.

For at least an hour after my sister and I left the art gallery I felt something that is very hard to describe. It was this feeling of almost panic. These things were going on around the world and I had to do something about it. Exactly what that is I am still not quite sure, but I think talking to people about it is a start. Making people aware of events like this that are still going on today in different places around the world. Praying for those that are oppressed is another thing that I can do. My friend Craig paints these depictions to help people remember and to spur a dialog about what is happening in our world. He feels that this is the way that God is calling him to respond to these issues. Thanks Craig for reminding me. To see some of Craig's work go here.