Every week, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 43-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.
Inspired by David’s illo of what looks like artifacts of unhappy events living in her head, I made a new video for “Orange Sunset” using a series of paintings called Speaking Truth To Power that I started around the time of the anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis.
I don’t usually rely on an existing phrase to make a point, but the phrase was being used by the activists, and I wanted the narrative element in the painting series to be clear, considering images of women with their mouths open can result in other narratives being imposed on them. And, in fact, I’ve combined both these ideas within the video.
“Orange Sunset” from Water Cuts My Hands (K, 1991) (download):
