Emmett's Soul On Canvas Art By Lisa Whittington

Emmett’s Soul on Canvas Art is a very complex process, in which the artist steamrolls ideas upon ideas onto a blank canvas. For example, Libation for Emmett Till was painted by Lisa Whittington, an African-American artist who was infamous for her art on the topic of racial injustice. The painting displays a pair of grapes, a wine glass that is filled with wine, a wine bottle that has Emmett Till’s photo, and one lone grape. The items are seemingly placed on top of a table that has a wrinkled white tablecloth covered with a brown background. These items are regularly described as normal, however, they can reveal a hidden meaning underneath the cloth. This is known as Symbolism, which plays an important role in a painting to bring forth the true

He was just a regular African-American teenage boy before he had his life brutally taken away by two white men based on a lie from a white woman saying that he “harassed” her. His death is, still to this day, very well-known due to his mother making the funeral not only public but open-casket as well. To show the world what those two men did to her son. This moment sparked a fire in many hearts, one such heart was Lisa Whittington. Whittington showed her support for Emmett Till’s story not just by talking, but by painting. She uses her paintings as a way to help bring forth her voice to reveal the injustice that African Americans have to face. Now onto the word Libation from the title, which has a very ambiguous meaning. It mainly depends on the person’s religious views on how they want to interpret the meaning. The main meaning of Libation is a ritual that pours a liquid as an “offering to a god or spirit or in memory of those who have died” to bring remembrance (Ojiugo and Onyioha). So added to the history of Emmett Till, the painting’s message is of remembrance of his fate, and that one lone grape meaning is that he will not be