Friday, September 9, 2011

Remembering 9-11 Ten Years Later



Ten years ago I was in Washington, D.C. on the morning of 9-11-2001. I was attending an annual meeting of a private equity fund that OBWC had invested. I was sitting in a large conference room in the basement of the Ritz Carlton Hotel when two screens came on showing the first of the World Trader Center Towers that was hit. I sat there and watched as the second plane crashed into the second tower. Within a few minutes the screens showed the local news coverage of the plane that hit the Pentagon just a few miles away from the hotel. That single day changed everything in the United States when it came to how secure we felt in our own country.

The above 2 paintings are to be viewed as a single painting, a vertical diptych. The 2 paintings just came to me as I just sat down one morning and painted these 2 pieces earlier this week. I read an article in the Sunday New York Times about the architect of the 9-11 Memorial and I was inspired by the simplicity of his sketch that was included with the article. At some point, I will have these 2 pieces framed together to express my remembrance of that morning that changed our country, September 11, 2001.

Remembering 9-11: A Tribute, acrylics on paper envelopes, 9-2011.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Annie and I stayed at the Marriot that used to be at the foot of the Towers, about a year before 9/11. It was so unnerving to realize that everything there was just GONE.

Butch said...

I remember where I was. I was leaning forward for a nurse to listen to my lungs at the Miami Valley Hospital. I had received my first pacemaker the day before. The TV's were suspended on multi-knuckled arms over the beds. When leaning forward my face was right up next to the TV screen so the picture wasn't clear. I had been reading the paper so I didn't even know what was on, I assumed it was some movie. Even when seeing the second plane hit I didn't realize what I was looking at until I turned up the volume. I will always be burned inot my memory.