“These leaves represent people, including our ancestors, who are right here around us. Do you see yourself?"

I asked if I could paint yvette’s portrait soon after she started working at Union Project. We had both recently visited The Legacy Memorial in Alabama, which honors the Black people who were terrorized, lynched, and humiliated by racial segregation.

My first attempt to honor yvette’s healing energy showed her palm on a tree filled with light, bathing hundreds of names of Black people who were killed. Letter by letter I etched them into thick paint with a palette knife, and wept as I repeated their names aloud.

But the painting was too literal, too painful, and not my story to tell. I set it aside for months before I felt emotionally ready to paint over it. I mourned and healed—the very processes I was trying to evoke in the painting.

For this version I chose yvette’s ancestral tea blend offerings as my inspiration. The delicate vine print on her skirt contrasts the bold message on her shirt—both expressions of the love I see in her.

I am so grateful to yvette for staying in relationship with me as I found my way through this painting journey—the longest and most difficult of all the painting journeys in this exhibit.

You know, this painting is not the original painting. There’s a story in that. It was a way to bring honor to those who had come before. And as I stand there, and I look at these brown leaves, the relationship with my ancestors, which also includes the trees and the earth and the water, is very present. The people are still represented in this painting, even though their names, which at one point did exist in the painting, actual physical names that you may be able to make out, are no longer there. This is so personal to me.

I find myself wondering what you see and do you see yourself, and what do you feel and what does that feel like? Do you feel honored? Can you step into it? Do you wonder what I’m thinking? What would you be thinking if you were standing here? The words on my shirt, can you read them? Is that hopeness or dopeness?

For my ancestors, I see each one of those leaves as the ancient ones who, you know, the ancestors are right behind my eyes. They’re right here. And each one of those leaves, when I think about our ancestors, I think about them being behind us, beside us, in front of us. Just all around us. So for my ancestors, it’s more of a, “I do hope you feel honored, and feel seen and not abandoned.”

These past several months have really demonstrated in a beautiful and challenging way the interconnectedness and the interdependence of all things. Beings. And I’m grateful to be in this, this Thing, with all the other beings. I am reminded that I am not alone. None of us are.

I was born Yvetta Lynn Shipman. Later became yvette lynn shipman. and I feel tender. I feel open. I feel proud. I feel exposed, I feel loved by you looking at my painting.