Triana Studios

Christmas gift for all of us!!

Not gardening related, but too epic not to post!

This is the second drawing in the collection Beloved: Unfinished Lives. If you zoom in, you will find my pencil lines in the unfinished part of the portrait, particularly in the chair beneath the seated man.

You will recall that the Warsaw Ghetto, established in 1940, was the largest in Europe. It held almost 450,000 Jews living in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions and being systematically starved to death. From the very beginning, food was smuggled in from the “Aryan side” and was the only additional source of desperately needed calories. Very few in the ghetto, however, had any source of income, and they had been allowed to bring a minimum of personal belongings with them. And so street trading became the norm and almost anything could be exchanged.

And that brings us to this unknown man. He sits beneath his umbrella in the bright sunshine with his wares on display. If you look closely you will see a pair of mismatched glasses and a small leather pouch in his suitcase. It was not his pitifully small offerings, however, that drew me to this scene - it was his stillness, his utter tranquility, speaking so eloquently of his interior life. I wondered what the man was doing and asked a number of rabbis, who immediately told me the man was praying.

We don’t know this man’s name, his life story, but we know that in the midst of horror, surrounded by death, he looked within for that on which he had built his life. The N***s could pen him in with impunity, could starve his body, but they could not touch his soul. The portrait is entitled And Still I Pray and is my humble effort to honor his life. ❤️✡️

Coming next week- And Still I Rise

Naomi Butler

𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑘𝑦 𝑖𝑠 𝑎𝑛 𝑖𝑛𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑚𝑜𝑣𝑖𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑚𝑒. 𝐼 𝑛𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑔𝑒𝑡 𝑡𝑖𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑙𝑜𝑜𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑡 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡'𝑠 ℎ𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑢𝑝 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒..☁️🌅☀️✨️

Jayna Monroe

You guys are so adorable 🥰

Emy Ann