“Conflicted Heart” by Karen Freiman-Fishman

Karen never thought she would love painting as much as she now does! Prior to taking her first art class in May of 2024, Karen had never picked up a paint brush!!! She had a friend encourage her to do so because Karen was still grieving her son’s unexpected death. Creating and painting has given her purpose and a reason to live. She is forever grateful and blessed! 

As of April of 2024, there have been sixteen reported school shootings. Three were on college campuses and thirteen at K-12 schools. 444,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since the Russian invasion, and more than 31,000 have died in the conflict between Israel and Palestine. The United States is the largest weapons supplier in the world. Hulbert Waldroup expressed his concerns about gun violence at home and abroad in his artwork. The show in the Mildred I. Washington Gallery at Dutchess Community College showed Waldroup’s portraits of the victims from the Sandy Hook Elementary School Massacre on December 14, 2012, in Newton, Connecticut.  

After killing his mother, Adam Lanza walked into the Sandy Hook Elementary School where he shot twenty-six children and their teachers, and then committed suicide. His mother took him target shooting with an AR-15, even after she noticed warning signs of his mental health issues.  

Hulbert expressed that if Lanza’s mother had exposed him to exploring his creative side, instead of taking him to the shooting range, he may have found different outlets to express himself rather than picking up a rifle that resulted in a massacre. 

In Waldroup’s paintings, you can see the bullet holes in the victim’s body, then the soul of some of the victims leaving their naked bodies in the different mortuary dimensions as they are realizing that they are dead. The paintings show the victims on the autopsy tables with green forests and light blue skies or in empty dark rooms.  

“Art can be about serious subjects at times and not making art to be happy, especially when there are serious issues in today’s world. In dark times, you can’t always expect an artist’s paintings to be joyous all the time,” Waldroup explained. Therefore, due to the seriousness of ongoing issues with gun violence, Hulbert uses his paintings to provoke thought. Some of his idols have painted the issues of their times in their societies, such as Michelangelo and Dali.  

Waldroup’s painting, “The Rape of the Yazidi Women,” presents the rape, murder and enslavement of the Yazidi women of Iraq by ISIS. The Yazidi faith is one of the oldest monotheistic religions in the world. Less than a million followers who mostly live in the heartland of Iraq were protected by Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s 5th President. After his death and the departure of US armed forces, ISIS used US military tanks and guns to seize power. ISIS enslaved the women and killed the Yazidi men. Then they forced the eradication of their traditions and faith. In the painting, Waldroup placed a peacock above the Yazidi woman. The peacock is the god of the Yazidi. She looks up at her god, as consciousness leaves her body during the sexual assault by the ISIS gang. 

Hulbert Waldroup was born in 1966 in a suburb of Chicago. This is where he developed his love for painting and eventually studied at the American Academy of the Arts. He recalls his first time seeing paintings in a basement filled with artwork. At the age of thirteen, Hulbert sold his first painting. Hulbert’s artwork has been featured in the U.S. and abroad. He is mostly recognized for the mural of Amadou Diallo in the Bronx. Diallo, a twenty three-year-old student, was shot by police as he returned home to his apartment in 1999. After fifteen years, Waldroup restored the mural which had been the subject of numerous news articles in major newspapers.