Documentary segment about Festival of Lights

When I started this imagery, I, I was thinking a lot about um when I, when during the war in Central America in the eighties and nineties and, and that there would be a lot of candlelight vigils. And I remember that. And then also I remember as

a young person being in processions where there were candles. But my main idea in this painting, I did the painting in 91 and then the in 2000 was that it would be um that the world and the Children are so weary of wars and that all

the Children of the world would, would go to the adults and say, please don't, don't uh destroy our world. This is what we have to live with. Please show us uh ways that we can have peace on the festival of lights. I began with many small

drawings and this was one of the beginning of the small drawings and it's a pen and ink drawing. But you can see how it's trying to figure out a shape of people marching with candles that would have been uh maybe uh about 1989. Now, on the

graph, what I wanted to bring out is that there are many um you know, to get this shimmery quality on around the candles. Um It, it's different when you're printing it. I, I would block out areas and then with the toothbrush, I would spatter the, the

uh where I wanted the color and it would either be white or an opaque yellow and then that would kind of make it sparkle so it wasn't all just hand done. So it had a random quality. And every time I'd print a green, a brown or

a, a blue or a yellow, I would keep working those dr the drawing of each um grass or each bush and keep repeating the drawings so that it has almost like a dimension. If you look at it at an angle, you'll see a dimension also um

in order to create the the dark around their faces. So it looks more like a uh a reflection from the candles. I had to do a much a careful stippling to create the shading around their eyes and the shadow. Then I think of the stars, the

stars are real brilliant and it almost looks like the stars are touching the hills and then the Children are finding those stars and bringing them to bring light. So Children like this a lot because they see themselves and they see the work that they would like

to do for peace.