Gallery Response Essay 2

 

Owen Roberts

April 8, 2022

New Jersey City Univ.

Art 263

Gallery Response Essay

 

 

 

The work that I thought was interesting and grasped my attention was ‘’Thank God I’m Home, said Marcel Brown, 2019’’ At the age of 18, Marcel Brown was wrongfully committed of murder and spent over 10 years in prison  This piece is supposed to portray when Marcel  was allowed to eat a home cooked meal at his Mother’s house instead of being locked away in jail. The painting focuses on a meal of a cornbeef sandwich and the words ‘’Thank God I’m Home’’ words said by Marcel Brown to his mother, is at the center. The moment I saw this painting and looked up the story behind it I thought about a documentary that I had watched a while back on another young black man who was wrongfully accused of a crime that he didn’t commit, in stealing a backpack. His name was Khalif Browder and he was sent to Rikers Island for that crime at the age of 17 for 17 months. This painting brought memories of the Khalief Browder incident because of the two scenarios endings and how their differences stood out. On the incident where Khalief Browder was sent to Rikers, all of the mental stress and PTSD he ended having from the trauma he went through being behind bars caused him to have depression when he was released from prison, and he eventually ended up killing himself, which wasn’t a good or happy ending that lefty me with hope for people who could’ve been wrongly convicted of a crime and serving time for it. Although that ending was bad, I was glad to come across another story/scenario like this and have a new ending that left me with hope. To hear about how Marcel Brown was given the opportunity to leave his prison cell go home to his Mother and have a home cooked meal and feel some sort of relief and happiness for finally being able to have that feeling of freedom and have the charges dismissed after 10 long years locked away made me happy for him.

 

The message that I received from this painting was a message of faith and hope. No matter what is going on in your life or how bad things seem, things will always look up and be better with time and hopeful mindsets. A message that I also received from this painting in my perspective was to always be grateful for what we have and to never envy others or think you have life worse than others, because the little things that we can sometimes take for granted like freedom and having the ability to do what we want when we want is needed and wanted by people who don’t have those things or opportunities from their own cards and circumstances that life dealt them with.

Self Image:

 

The image that I chose was a picture of my sister and I when we were little and went on our family trip to Disneyworld with our mom and dad. I chose this picture because when I stumbled across it, I was reminded to never take people, your time with them, or anything including life in general, for granted or take advantage of it, because in the blink of an eye everything can change, people can die, times can pass, or you can just drift apart. In my case, my sister passed away when she was 18. So I decided to use this picture to express those feelings and memories and relate them to the painting.

 

My computer was not letting me transfer the picture to my word document.