Delano Dunn, I’m Their Guy (2023)

Paper, shoe polish, spray paint, wood stain, and resin on wood   60 in x 36 in “These works are about Clarence Thomas, an associate justice of the Supreme Court of The United States and the second African American appointed to the bench. I have always been fascinated by Thomas. As a jurist he leans heavily to the right, with a jurist prudence that has in many ways worked against African American civil rights progress. However, it seems if you were to ask him about opinions and dissents and if they work to counter African American advancement in this country, I believe he would say no. When I think about Thomas my mind begins to make comparisons to the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw and Joseph Merrick, The Elephant Man. Not because of Thomas’s physical appearance, but rather the idea of plucking someone out of one space, dressing them up, and placing them in another. The idea of portraits came to me when news broke that Harlen Crow, a conservative activist, commissioned a portrait of Thomas for his study. The idea of this struck me. The two are very close friends but I was surprised that anyone would commission a portrait of a close friend to hand in their home. The portraits don’t ‘look’ like Thomas, and you are not necessarily expected to get to the idea that these are portraits of him by first glance. What I hope to convey is the idea of the stranger or the ‘other’.”  This piece will be available after the closing of Echoes in the Margin on November 29, 2026.