Beloved Memphis artist Frankd Robison posts pictures of himself on social media as well as his friends and his healing process as he works to deal with serious health problems.  It’s lucky for me because I can practice sketching various facial expressions from his pictures.  He posts his paintings and his philosophy of hope, and the belief that love never fails, without ignoring the sorrow and brutality of the world.

Earlier this year he posted this photograph:

I look at it frequently — something about the light and his expression and his clothes strike me as sacred.  The sacred struggle of life as we try to survive diseases in addition to all the chaos and pain life throws our way.   There is pain, but there is light, there is grace.

I didn’t know if I had the skill to paint this light, but it kept nagging at me.  I wanted to commune with the image in a way that I can only do with paint.  So I plunged forward and painted it the best I could.

My goal wasn’t to exactly reproduce the photograph, but to do an homage, like I did with my last painting of Frankd.

And here are a few of Frankd Robinson’s remarkable works:

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