This is part 3 of a series, Part 1 and Part 2 if you want additional context. Otherwise, another week in on this mixed-media piece for a friend who commissioned me. My friend is a lawyer, and imagining the myriad of emotions she's had to endure throughout law school and early years starting out with her own practice. To get me in that headspace, I have been watching some of law-drama John Grisham novel-inspired films of the 1990s. There was this trend in that era. You may know them, they typically take place on the east coast or southern states of the US where there is an alarmingly low number of Black folks unless it's Sam Jackson, Danny Glover, and/or Morgan Freeman. Diversity is vital to any system working in a way that addresses human needs and nuance. The criminial justice system is not well-known for celebrating diversity, but instead punishing those who might not fit into certain groups. It's important to me that this imaginary jury is diverse.
I think these films may have influenced many folks of my generation to seek out work in courtrooms and law enforcement--including my friend. Hollywood makes it all sexy, exciting, and filled with drama. Not a lot of exciting scenes showing book-reading, searching through files and folders, and computers were still being....leased? Yeah. Different time. Though, there are definitely some moments that I imagine were somewhat more realistic than others. Francis Ford Coppola's Rainmaker features a great cast, directing, etc. but what it does really well is show the weird awkwardness from law school to practicing law through the story of Matt Damon's character. With all this inspiration, I found myself at the local thift stores over the weekend and...a gem! I found a Law Dictionary, 5th edition.
I flipped through it and pulled some good terms that I thought might be fitting for family law and adjacent housing law that my friend has dealt with on occasion. She believes whole-heartedly in taking care of families through her practice, but this can be a challenging role. Rainmaker ends with the message that not all the people an attorney defends may have similar values. That would be a challenge to create and maintain boundaries throughout a career where bending rules until they barely exist leads to undesirable outcomes. The "bad kind" of TV and movie lawyers who are often depicted as older. upper class white males who defend mega-corporations and crooked politicians without feeling guilty. I really wanted to take that energy and channel it into the opposing lawyer's in the painting. The kind of lawyers I see in these movies are incredibly well dressed and groomed, and full of competitive back-handed compliments. My friend was always painfully skilled at dealing with such people when we were growing up. Her presence in the piece I hope to make powerfully bright but somehow not aggressive or threatening. I hope I'm on the right track, the watercolor paints have been doing alright in layers, but the paper is starting to get a little wavy in the jury area.
To juxtapose the opposing counsel with my friend and her client, I want to show her approach through powerful empathy and a deep love for children's innocence and curiosity. Not with harsh, sharp feathers of some angel artwork--but soft and pillowy feathers that flap and flex as needed. In the scales of justice, I added little details of family symbols against some of the larger property and ownership focused symbols that regularly come up in divorce. Slowly but surely, I am working through this piece in chunks. I hope that things blend together well as I bring the right side of the page together. Stay tuned for the next one and just a public service announcement to stay curious!
Comentarios