Memories of a Freedom March Painting

My name is Sarah Louise Wilson. I was born in the cold state of Alaska but I consider myself a California girl at heart since we moved to California when I was seven years old. I also lived in Wisconsin for a stint and ate really good cheese. My love for good cheese and cuisine was further fulfilled when I traveled and lived abroad from Greece, Paris, Lebanon, and even Kazakhstan as an adult, but I am jumping ahead. I began painting in my childhood — which, like all childhoods, was traumatic from time to time but also filled with tremendous joy and imagination. Drawing and painting were excellent ways for me to exercise my range of emotions. It had to be around ten years old when I won a national art contest for a drawing I did. A year later, I sketched the birth of Jesus on the back of my father’s blueprints which he brought down to the local newspaper. They not only did a write-up about the art, but they also awarded me with a trophy and some cash. This, in a way, solidified my future vocation, or one of them. I also found filmmaking to be a wonderful way to express myself. However, I have found my way back to painting in the last year during quarantine when the social injustice was too much for me to endure. I needed to paint these feelings out of me and in doing so, I discovered many things about our shared past, present, and future.