Studies for a larger painting. Images updated. Abstract
Ballerinas, three watercolor paintings (version 2)
People and portraits
Two Chillin’ (watercolor)
Part of a new series of brightly colored paintings based on models
Nude in Pompeii
Acrylic painting
Acrylic
Face from side and below, tilted, Conte pencil
Go, Figures
Four Figures, pen and ink drawing
Margaret Walker, African American poet
Margaret Walker (1915-1998) was a highly accomplished woman. She was at college student at the young age of 15 when she begin writing poetry. In 1936 she joined the Federal Writers’ Project in Chicago, befriending Richard Wright. BA from Northwestern 1935, MA and Ph D U of Iowa 1945. Her dissertation was published as a novel, Jubilee 1966.
Walker was the first African American poet to receive the Yale Younger Poets Prize, penning For My People 1942. She published This Is My Century: New and Collected Poems , October Journey and Prophets for a New Day .
In 1949 she joined the faculty at Jackson State College. She returned to the University of Iowa for her doctoral studies and received a PhD in 1965. In 1968 Walker founded the Institute for the Study of the History, Life, and Culture of Black People at Jackson State College.
As what became the Margaret Walker Center, she organized the 1971 National Evaluative Conference on Black Studies and the 1973 Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival.
In 1979 she published On Being Female, Black, and Free, a collection of personal essays, and Richard Wright: Daemonic Genius.
Judi Dench as a Young Woman
Judi Dench (1934) as a Shakespearean actress. One of the finest actresses Britain has ever produced. Conte pencil
Umberto Ecco
Umberto Ecco (1932-2016) was a medievalist, philosopher, semiotician, novelist, cultural critic, and political and social commentator. He is best known for his popular 1980 novel The Name of the Rose, made into the movie with Sean Connery playing the leading role. The novel is a tour de force of intricacies of medieval theology. Foucault’s Pendulum pokes fun, again intricately, at conspiracy theory, while Prague Cemetery revisits the plots of the Risorgimento. Another of my heroes. He taught at the University of Bologna, which we visited along with the Focault pendulum then swinging in the cathedral. Portrait in Conte.
Stormy Braggs
