Reserved for Royalty

Throughout history, mankind has elevated and immortalized the rich and powerful and those with means through art and portraiture. The oil paintings of England’s King Henry VIII by Hans Holbein, and the many portraits of Queen Elizabeth I are famous examples of this type of iconography. The National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC carries on this tradition with walls of paintings of former Commanders in Chiefs in styles and with poses reminiscent of these traditional paintings of European monarchy. Even going as far back as Ancient Egypt with the Sarcophagus of King Tutankhamen with the boy king’s image sculpted in gold and the stucco-coated limestone and the bust of Queen Nefertiti are some the earliest examples of elevated status reinforced through art

In this body of work I decided to create portraiture that would elevate those individuals in society that tend to get ignored by mainstream, those in the community who sometimes fall into the cracks of society and become invisible against the backdrop of our lives, and to some, do not measure up to societies standards and “norms”. 

The housing insecure in our communities more often than not go unnoticed by those of us who go about the "hustle and bustle” of our daily lives. At night as we sit in the comfort of our homes, we don’t think about those who sleep on the sidewalks we stampede through during our day. So familiar in urban landscapes the unhoused have become filtered out like white noise except when we feel inconvenienced by them. 

In the San Francisco Bay Area it is estimated that the amount of housing insecure individuals has increased by. 8,300 from 2022 to 2024. My objective through this body of work is to create more compassion and awareness and give some identity and humanity back to those unhoused individuals and create more awareness of this growing issue, with the increasing dissolution of the middle class, by allowing you to see these individuals as human first, with value and not just walk by them.