Kimberly Dow | And the Child Shall Bear Witness, 2025
Artist Statement:
This painting is born out of grief, reckoning, and an unflinching gaze at the world we are leaving behind for the next generation. A young figure stands against the backdrop of a world unraveling—flames, smoke, and the shadow of destruction pressing in from every side. There is no innocence spared here. The child does not look away; instead, he becomes the unwilling witness to the choices of those who came before him.
Children inherit not only the earth, but the memory of its ruin. His quiet stare is both accusation and plea. In this work, I wanted to hold the tension between fragility and resilience, between despair and the possibility of endurance. To me, the child embodies the haunting question: what legacy will we force the youngest among us to carry?
