Running Under Controversy

acrylic and colored inks

Congressman Gerry Studds (D Massachusetts) admitted to an affair with a male congressional page during his time in the House. When he ran for re-election, the matter was raised as a campaign issue and he was forced to confront it again and again. The challenge of this two page spread was to capture the stress of running for high office under a cloud of controversy, without sacrificing objectivity. To solve this problem, I chose to use broad strokes of acrylic gel medium over the initial drawing with washes of ink over that to allow varying degrees of transparency and opacity.