This project is a hard one for me… Because of the current state of our government I am feeling like censoring my own art in posting. NEVER have I felt like that.
I don’t know if I will finish this Sketchbook Project notebook in time…
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Sketchbook Project notebook, with a Pentalic HB woodless pencil,
Platinum Carbon Pen with Platinum Carbon ink waterproof cartridges,
Sennelier and Daniel Smith Watercolors.
©D. Katie Powell.
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I teach architectural sketching,
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That annoying loud-mouth editor/critic in your head? GONE! How great would that be?
D.Katie Powell Art 
I don’t know if “like” is the right response, but I have to honour what you have written somehow. It’s a bad time.
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I completely understand. Self-censorship is unfamiliar territory to me (although I do a bit of it with family or some such thing).
Interestingly, there is a flurry going on in the artworld about censorship right now. You might enjoy this very long article:
https://hyperallergic.com/368290/censorship-not-the-painting-must-go-on-dana-schutzs-image-of-emmett-till/
I think views on many sides were well-represented as food for thought.
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Thanks for the link. It was a very thoughtful piece.
This issue about cultural appropriation feels real to me. I am reluctant to draw from news stories or photojournalism as I feel no direct connection with the material: it would feel exploitative. Yet the work I do day to day is full of human drama but is off limits for representational art for reason of confidentiality (I am a cancer physician). Again these are not my stories. This is how I self censor.
However, we have shared narratives and do not live within labelled boxes. In painting Emmett Till’s body, Schutz was not arrogantly claiming to speak to or for Black people or commandeering their experience, she was speaking for our shared humanity.
Perhaps that is what it is to be an artist, to appropriate our human narratives and represent them, at risk. Perhaps that is what makes me hobby sketcher not an artist: I don’t take those chances nor risk offending.
I guess the painting and the protest and all our various responses, are the art.
I hope this helps turn attention on the true villains, who are killers then and now.
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I haven’t answered this because I have a good deal to say and no time to write it. So much here, and wish we could actually talk.
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