[jazz-funk music]
- Jerry Butler: My responsibility as an artist
is to tell the truth.
When I was growing up, you know,
I was a nobody,
just out in some field back in the woods.
But then, there were a lot of people who were somebody.
You know, my teachers in school, principals.
People who were somebody told me I was somebody.
And so now,
I feel that I have to illustrate and to talk about
the bravery of everyday people.
The kind of paintings I do
will fall into the category of multimedia, collage,
and also tend to move into the area of representation.
Representation, for me, is doing something realistic.
The parallels that I see
between being an artist in the Civil Rights Era
and doing work now.
For me, time has somewhat collapsed.
In the beginning of my works,
I was doing realistic works
like portraits of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X
during the time of the civil rights.
So, the process to paint people
who were in the Civil Rights Movement
came from my desire to join it.
Of course, my parents didn't want me to get involved in that.
So, I started drawing the figures.
And now, it's pretty much the same thing,
but I'm not doing figures of that era.
I'm doing figures of regular everyday people.
In my studio practice, I use various works,
archival works, references,
and I'm bringing ideas in as I do work.
And I want to try to shine a light on a lot of the people;
even though they're, they were oppressed,
or they are descendants of the disenfranchised.
My whole thing is to say
that "No matter what we have, we have one life,
and that life needs to be explored to the fullest."
To do that, you have to understand yourself
and try to see if you can make the best of what you got.
But I also have a responsibility to art as a work of art,
and it should also embody the truth
in terms of expressing
where I am in my community and the people around me.
So, I have to be brave enough to state the truth.
And so, that's my responsibility as an artist.
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