Whitewashing

I started out this series of prints about the Pilgrims with the question "who were my ancestors and do their thoughts and actions matter anymore?" As I've studied them and read various accounts of their exploits, the question that is with me more often is "Why don't we know this?" The more I learn, the more amazement I feel at how much of the history of my own country is neither taught nor considered relevant. One of the words we use to describe the glossing over or covering up of uncomfortable truths is "whitewashing."

Which made today's printing session seem so appropriate. Because I wanted to "screen back" the background so that later on I can overprint something else, I decided to basically whitewash it. I cut some squiggly yersina pestis (plague bacteria) style shapes on the flat block that I started out with and then printed the whole background with a couple of layers of thin white paint.

Yep, it looks whitewashed.