The Flickr Artistvoice Image Generatr

“Pay This Some Mind!” (Final Version)
Acrylic and Mixed Media, 16x20, 2024
Part of the Voices in Protest series

This painting began as an abstract attempt to say something honest about Pride without co-opting someone else’s struggle — but as it grew, it became a larger conversation. Inspired by the 1969 Stonewall uprising and set in front of the U.S. Capitol, the piece features figures modeled after Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, holding signs — including one left blank.

At its first showing, visitors were invited to fill in that empty sign with their own messages using sticky notes. What emerged was powerful: voices speaking out on veterans’ care, immigration, personal identity, and resistance.

🌸 “They tried to bury us, but they didn’t know we are seeds.”

This final version preserves those community messages, woven into the piece’s DNA — but the invitation still stands.
What would your sign say?
Drop it in the comments or visit the gallery — and add your voice.

️ This painting appears alongside Before the Noise and Words Woven Walking Waukegan, other works in this unfolding story. You can view the full series in this album.

️ Before the Noise
Acrylic on Canvas, 16x20, 2024
Part of the Voices in Protest series

A quiet moment before history makes a sound.

Set in a 1950s gay bar, Before the Noise captures the tension and coded communication of a time when being yourself meant risking arrest — or worse. The figures avoid eye contact, communicate through mirrors, and stare into drinks, doing their best to remain invisible. No one looks happy. It’s quiet, dim, and guarded. It was survival.

This work stands in contrast to Pay This Some Mind!, which draws from protest imagery full of sound, color, and community. Together, these works form a spectrum — the silence before, and the roar after.

️ See the rest of the Voices in Protest series in this album, including Words Woven Walking Waukegan, which transforms audience interaction into a unified visual chorus.

️ Words Woven Walking Waukegan
Acrylic, Ink & Collage on Canvas, 8x10, 2025
Part of the Voices in Protest series

Built from the actual sticky notes submitted by viewers of Pay This Some Mind!, this piece becomes a chorus of voices layered over a gray urban backdrop. Floating post-it signs, each handwritten by someone who stood before the painting, capture the immediacy and intimacy of lived convictions — “No Human Is Illegal,” “We the People,” “Hands Off Veterans’ Care.”

Silhouetted figures march below, faceless but unified. The messages they carry—yours—create the color, rhythm, and purpose of the scene. This piece wouldn't exist without the community, and now it speaks for them.

️ View this alongside the other works in the series—Before the Noise and Pay This Some Mind!—to experience the emotional spectrum of protest, from hidden fear to collective expression.