Thanks Norman Rockwell, 17″ x 20″

What can one say or do?  When you are coming up as an adolescent entertaining to be an artist and your whole community tells you you’re wasting your time. “You can’t even name one famous black artist and plus you are going to starve to death. Get a job boy, become a postal worker or civil servant city employee.

But in many people’s eyes, I continue to ignore the doomsday conclusion and then one day I win a young adult first prize art show. And given a scholarship to the Famous Artist School in Westport, Connecticut, with a stable of artists like; Norman Rockwell Albert Dawn, Don Kingman and then written up in our community famous black newspaper named; The Amsterdam News with a newspaper headline.

“Harlem Boy is a Promising Genius”, but I was never knowing that my so-call last name which  I was working so hard to make famous at that time was “Goodwin” and not  “Newson”, because it was never told to me that NEWSON was my real last name, this truth was hidden from me until I was 21 years old.

But as an adult now, I must forgive my neglectful parents; but praise people like; Norman Rockwell who’s outside of my community and a different race encouraged me to be all I could be before drugs, alcohol and other devices infected my community.