Barack Obama, Democratic Nominee

Regular followers of this blog will notice the image above can be found elsewhere within these pages. But, the timing is very ripe for a re-posting of Senator Obama, who just last week became the Democratic nominee for President of the United States.

Regardless of whether one agrees with his politics, he or she would be hard pressed to successfully deny the historical significance that comes with his nomination. As unremarkable as it should have been, when it became official, I found myself taking a seat to consider its significance, like so many others. It's quite interesting how perception and reality can differ. I wasn't expecting the weight of history to be as heavy as it was on me.

Back to the illustration. It was created in May of 2007 when the 2008 political season was just starting, and Obama was just an intriguing character sneaking into the public consciousness. At that time, most people were putting money on Hillary like she was Big Brown at the Belmont. Da' Tara would go on to win the Belmont Stakes and upset the field.

On another note, I was alerted to Chas Fagan being interviewed on C-SPAN this weekend. Chas is a portrait artist and sculpturist who has done paintings and sculptures of many presidential figures. He was speaking about a Lincoln bust he completed, as part of the Lincoln bicentennial celebration. He was fielding questions that I found very interesting and abnormally relevant to the current docket of assignments on my schedule (which I must keep secret until finalized, but one's a biggie -- for me anyway). Anyone interested in portrait painting and art in general should try to catch it, if you can. Explore Chas' work here.