Obama and the Tree of Knowledge is a portrait that I painted to capture the religious fervor surrounding the election and inauguration of our first African American President. Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States, was sworn into office on January 20, 2009. It took me approximately a year and a half to create this painting, which was completed, signed and dated on the day that Osama bin Laden was captured and executed.
This series of photographs show the steps that I took to create the painting. My initial concept was to create an image of the President that might look as if he were standing in front of a gothic stained glass window. In my portraiture, I use the background to represent the emotional life of the sitter. Clearly the President didn’t sit for me, so I pieced together over half a dozen images from the web, and also hired a hand model to get the correct angle of his hand on the bible.
I started by doing an underdrawing for his face, hands, clothing and the ornate corinthian column. The background was done free hand, with the exception of the paintings border. Using the Presidential Seal as my inspiration for his halo, I laid down red paint prior to using the gold leaf, which is traditionally done in religious paintings. Additionally, I chose the corinthian column because it’s the same type of column used for the white house. In the early stages of my painting, you’ll see cracks in the column, and my intention was to show that democracy might be crumbling under the weight of the religious right, ie, the literal bible. Ultimately I softened those cracks, and used red color on the right, and blue on the left to represent the red and blue states of our election process.
The Tree of Knowledge, the tree seen behind him, refers to the Presidents high level of education, book smart, but not necessarily wise in the world of Washington politics. The large green tree is also a reference to a money tree, reflecting the soaring national debt that was happening at the time of his inauguration. As I mentioned earlier, I used the Presidential Seal as his halo. However, if you look closely, you’ll notice three black lines breaking up the circumference of the halo. Those lines are meant to infer crosshairs, as if he were being viewed through the telescope of a gun… because lets face it, as the first black President, Obama might also be a target to some.
As an artist I’m committed to painting the portrait of every future President. My first Presidential portrait was of George W. Bush, which can also be seen on my website. I look forward to sharing that portrait here in the near future, and also breaking down the symbolism in that painting.
