Middle Passage

This was the piece that started the entire collection. While researching the Middle Passage to make it accurate, I ran into facts and histories that I had never been taught...not in school, not anywhere. That research pushed me into creating a full exhibit, because the reality was far worse than the version America usually tells.

The finished painting will show the cost of what happens when a rebellion breaks out on a slave ship: the chaos, the violence, the fire, the sinking ship, and the bodies, both enslaved and slavers scattered in the water. Sharks circling, debris drifting, smoke rising, birds overhead, and another slaver ship approaching in the distance. Nothing heroic, nothing softened. Just the truth of what this journey actually looked like when people fought back and paid for it with their lives.