Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Lines Of Duty / Detective James Zadroga, First Draft

Click to view larger image. Largest.

First draft of a portrait in progress of New York Police Detective James Zadroga, who passed away earlier this year of a respiratory disease contracted at the site of the World Trade Center rescue and recovery. This is the basic layout of the portrait; the final version should look quite a bit different. The theme is that Detective Zadroga was caught between both the toxic dust and smoke from the World Trade Center on one side, and a failed bureaucracy on the other.

I'm using as reference a few photographs taken by the Zadroga family, and also from photographs in the book Here Is New York. You can see the page numbers I noted in the bottom right hand side of the drawing.

Talked on the phone today with someone at a major news network regarding placing Lines Of Duty as a continuing opinion piece on their site. Could happen. The main question was how I choose who to memorialize. The answer is, I don't really have any sort of plan. I search the Internet for subjects which have the most promising artistic possibilities, and try to alternate the service branches represented. Usually I just go with whatever strikes me emotionally. If I don't have some personal interest in a portrait, why should the viewer?