What They Could Never Take From Us

Built around my original photograph of Cyrus Dallin’s Appeal to the Great Spirit outside Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, this mixed media work considers what survives dispossession: spirit, dignity, ancestral memory, and the determination to remain.

Seen from behind, the figure’s open arms meet a field of heavily textured red. The surface carries tension and scars, while the gesture remains expansive. For me, those arms hold both grief and defiance. We are still here.

Created as a companion to What They Took From Us, this work turns toward the inheritance that cannot be owned or erased.

Mixed media on canvas incorporating original photography by Taylor McLendon.

30 × 40 inches $1,800