Child of Innocence

Date completed: June 9, 2022

People of War – Child of Innocence

This is the fifth piece in my “People of War’ series. Thank you, Wendy Hodgkins Corniquet for your amazing reference photo of this Ukrainian little girl that you shared. I’m so in love with this piece.

This little girl has haunted my dreams since the first time I saw the photo and knew I wanted to do this series. I knew she had to be a part of the series, but how to do justice to her innocence, how to capture that on paper?   There are lots of times that you start a painting, and it goes south, and you restart is, then there are times that a painting paints itself.  That was the case for this little girl. Once I started, I knew I had to take my time creating this piece. She needed very few hard edges as I wanted to show her softness, but also her strength.  Her hope but also her sadness, and the immoral atrocities that this child has experienced along with her innocence.  I hope I have achieved all of this in this piece of art.

When I look at this child, I see the children of our world. As I created her on my paper my mind wandered to what are my own granddaughters thinking of what their future holds, what are they feeling and how are they perceive what
“heartache, but there is only so much that a parent can do as our kids are not naïve.

What has this little girl experience, I can’t begin to imagine. What does her life hold for her? What will she do as she grows older; will she work to make changes to better our world?  Are our children that are seeing the tragedies in our world, work to better our world?   I hope our children of our world grow into loving, strong and caring individual that work hard to make our world into a healthier and safer world.

I’ll be donating a portion of the proceeds of my original piece “Child of Innocence” and of the proceeds of any prints of “Child of Innocence”. My donation will be given to UNICEF: Children in Crossfire of Ukraine Crisis.

Created on 11” X 15” Stonehenge Aqua 300 lb. cold press watercolor paper, using fountain pen inks. graphite and Brusho Watercolor Crystals.