This was to have been the fourth of the four Lakeville Highway N... paintings, but the underpainting stopped me dead in my tracks and said You Are Done Here.
It happens that this occurred in the first days of the mass forcible separations at our southern border. I found myself transfixed by the sheer willful power of the image on the canvas before me and essentially asked it was it is.
And the Woody Guthrie song "Deportee" was the next thing in my head and that was that.
Deportee - 24" x 30" - acrylic on canvas - copyright 2018 The song Deportee is by Woody Guthrie copyright renewed 1961.
The crops are all in and the peaches are rott'ning,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps;
They're flying 'em back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be "deportees"
My father's own father, he waded that river,
They took all the money he made in his life;
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees,
And they rode the truck till they took down and died.
Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,
Our work contract's out and we have to move on;
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.
We died in your hills, we died in your deserts,
We died in your valleys and died on your plains.
We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes,
Both sides of the river, we died just the same.
The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says, "They are just deportees"
Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except "deportees"?