Red and Yellow, Black and White (1993 - 1995)

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Today we acknowledge that there are all the races in my family. As children we learned very quickly about racial double standards in Sunday school. We would sing, "red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight" and go home to live out internalized racism about our own ethnicity. As a mixed racial family, this was our greatest contribution to the ideal of a single civilization for everyone. The meaning of this impoverishment on my life is still revealing itself to me.

The complete series will contain four separate paintings hung two across the top and two underneath. A young child from each racial group, red, yellow, black, and white, will embrace a different bird representative of peace and grace, as generally attributed to Native American, Asian, African, and European cultures. Each painting is to be juxtaposed flush to the others.

The idea to express this theme occurred as I was painting my middle son from a snapshot taken 20 years ago. I was feeling nostalgic about his childhood, so I began to paint him as a tot. After I painted him with the dove and olive branch, I began musing about just how universal these signs of peace were. They're not. Then I decided to add three other paintings to portray a more inclusive symbolism. These three components are currently in process.

- Martha Hollingsworth, 1994

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