The Belgian painter Luc Tuymans, a friend of Mr. Marshall’s, noted that he is an intensely “deliberate” painter, and that Audubon’s obsessive meticulousness would naturally have appealed.
These decorative paintings of artificial flowers, flightless birds and exquisitely rendered birdhouses have an airless quality to them that stirs disturbingly.
I’m glad to pick up hints at how Mr. Marshall mixes what he calls a “fundamental” blackness that, in his words, “has volume [and] breathes.”
… Mr. Marshall painstakingly adjusts both the chroma (the warmth or coolness) and the value (the amount of light or dark) by mixing colors like raw sienna, chrome green, cobalt blue, and violet with black pigments.
(Ted Loos, “Kerry James Marshall’s Black Birds Take Flight in a New Series,” NYTimes, 7-29-20)
(c) 2020 JMN
EthicalDative 
John Lewis
[When I inserted the photograph of Mr. Lewis included in the NYTimes I triggered the above warning, so I substituted a sketch of mine for the photograph.]
Representative John Lewis died on July 17, 2020. These are the last words of the essay he wrote shortly before his death. It was published yesterday, the day of his funeral.
When historians pick up their pens to write the story of the 21st century, let them say that it was your generation who laid down the heavy burdens of hate at last and that peace finally triumphed over violence, aggression and war. So I say to you, walk with the wind, brothers and sisters, and let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide.
Comparable words have been spoken by others, but Mr. Lewis uttered them with his life. I hope they will haunt and displace the monstrosity wracking our polity.
(John Lewis, “Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of our Nation,” NYTimes, 7-30-20)
(c) 2020 JMN