King George Stinney II of Alcolu Print

In 1944, Prisoner No. 260 was convicted of murdering two white girls, Betty June Binnicker (age 11) and Mary Emma Thames (age 7) in his hometown of Alcolu, South Carolina and sentenced to the chair. He was 14 years old during his conviction. They shaved his head and his leg to allow for good conductivity of the current. Then they used a Bible to boost him up on Ol’ Sparky because he was too small to fit. An anonymous executor flipped the switch and more than 2,000 deadly volts of electricity ran through the boy’s body, charring his flesh and destroying his heart. The nature of the crimes he was killed for was horrendous- imagine your 7 yr. old daughter, leaving the house to search for flowers and never coming back home because her skull was cracked open with brute force. Truly sad. Prisoner No. 260 may well have committed the crime, but that is not the issue here. The problem is this: the law failed prisoner no. 260 MISERABLY. The prosecutor relied, almost exclusively, on the unrecorded, unsigned "confession" given by a 14yr old boy without any present legal counsel or parental consort - a boy whom the police starved and then bribed with food. There was absolutely no evidence whatsoever to present to the jury, not even the piece of iron the police claimed the defendant led them to. His lawyer did not call a single exculpating witness nor did he even challenge the prosecution’s differing accounts of his client’s “confession”. It took the jury LESS THAN 10 MINUTES to recommend the death penalty despite COMPLETE lack of evidence. Long story short, this was not a case of proving his guilt or innocence - it was a public mockery of “following due process” after his guilt had already been informally established in the absence of evidence. Truth is, we should never have known about the boy - not this way. He should have lived to a ripe old age and died among family. I absolutely hated seeing him in prison uniform, so I painted him in the most appropriate attire. Because prisoner no. 260 was KING GEORGE JUNIUS STINNEY Jr. and we will never forget. My portraits are presented upside down for a multiplicity of reasons. For one, I constantly rotate my canvas on the easel to keep the work alive. Nonetheless, my portraits are always finalized upside down - as such I find it appropriate to present them as such to my audience so you can have an authentic perception of the piece at completion. In addition, this change of orientation is a play on the idea that one's orientation in the world can radically shift one's perception of their environment, introducing auras and energies that were absent in the past while adding an extra layer of visual significance to grapple with as the work is contemplated. It is my hope, as always that when my work is studied or visualized, the viewer put aside all previous notions of what art is or supposed to be...and just look. Examine yourself, pay attention to the feelings my work arouses then confront those feelings with the truth. I do not aim to entertain; I aim to enlighten. Nous tous sommes les artisans du champ. Painting executed without hanging hardware on gallery-wrapped double-primed cotton duck canvas of premium quality.

Print:Giclee on Fine Art Paper

Size:9 W x 12 H x 0.1 D in

Size with Frame:14.25 W x 17.25 H x 1.2 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.