Requiem

During more than two centuries the United States has committed abuses of power that have resulted in the deaths of many people. American greed and prejudices have resulted in additional deaths. Each of the nine paintings in the Requiem is named for a section of the Roman Catholic mass for the dead. However, none of the paintings is religious. The paintings are abstract and use colors, shapes, lines, and textures the same way Mozart, Berlioz and Verdi used melody, harmony, tempo and dynamics to create their Requiems. Subjects in the paintings include: the dropping of nuclear bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan; the My Lai massacre in Vietnam; the lynchings of black men in the South; the brutal killing of Matthew Shepard, a homosexual college student in Wyoming; and the killing of innocent children and their families with drones in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen.