A Norman Rockwell Life

I've always liked Norman Rockwell's work. It was on countless covers of the Saturday Evening Post. I've taken the Post off and on for many years even though it was way farther to the right than I could stomach sometimes.

I take it now because it's almost totally a medical magazine for us oldies. And it's headquartered in Indianapolis, my home town.

The first time an art critic, with his nose in the air, explained to me that Rockwell was "an illustrator, NOT an artist, I was intimidated.

The next time I was ready for him.

Rockwell was both America's premiere illustrator for more than six decades - and an artist.

He painted sweet scenes of Americana and he showed us the ugly side of America's complex social issues.

Yesterday my Boyfriend and I attended the Norman Rockwell exhibit at our downtown art museum. The display is huge. It's also heartwarming, funny, sad and frightening.

In the early years Rockwell had to eliminate African Americans from his work because the Post's policy dictated showing black people only in service industry jobs.

Later on he painted the most famous cover to come out of the civil rights movement. Titled "The Problem We All Live With," it depicted a beautiful little black girl in a beautiful little white dress walking to her first class in an integrated school, accompanied by U.S. Marshals. All of them were being pelted by rotten vegetables.

The painting made grown men cry. It also generated death threats for Rockwell.

That picture, along with several others including the famous "Murder in Mississippi" helped us Americans see who we were - warts and all.

Every one of Rockwell's illustrations/paintings tells a story.

I love to tell stories in pictures. For me, the story is the first thing and the last thing. Norman Rockwell

For me too!



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