LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Adrian Brandon is a Brooklyn-based artist that is asking viewers to look at Breonna Taylor’s incomplete life by looking at his incomplete art.
Taylor was 26 years old when she was fatally shot by Louisville police on March 13, 2020. So for 26 minutes, Brandon colored in the portrait he drew of her.
“It’s an incomplete portrait, which represents these incomplete lives, and there’s so many questions that the emptiness, all the white space, that the viewer is kind of forced to address and digest,” Brandon explained.
Questions, Brandon said, such as who was this person? Who were they becoming? Taylor’s portrait is one of 62 so far in a series that Brandon titled “Stolen.”
“There’s so many names, and this list of lives that have been killed by police is growing at such a staggering rate that people aren’t able to grieve properly, and I feel like the word stolen kind of addresses that, a little bit more, it kind of addresses the harshness of the reality of the situation,” Brandon told Spectrum News 1.
Brandon posted his first portrait in the series on Feb. 1, 2019, and it was of Alton Sterling who was fatally shot by police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 2016.
First, Brandon draws the portrait with a pencil. Then, he sets a timer. One minute is set for every year of life his subject lived, and the total is how long he colors in the drawing with markers.
Brandon said the timer creates fear and anxiety that forces him to rush, but it also controls his pace so he can give each piece the attention it deserves.
“To me, that fear and anxiety, that also plays and kind of represents this greater fear and anxiety that a lot of people in the Black community feel, especially with confrontations with the police, and, you know, the fear that our time could be up any minute, and that time is so fragile for us,” Brandon told Spectrum News 1.
While drawing Taylor’s portrait, Brandon said the overwhelming emotion he felt was heartbreak.
“Her case and her story is something that I continue to think about and have thought about. I often think about it as I go to bed at night with my girlfriend and thinking about how safe I should be feeling, right, going to bed in your own home,” Brandon said.
He said that when someone looks at Breonna Taylor’s unfinished portrait, he wants them to investigate how they feel when they look at the emptiness.
“I want people to think of what questions come to mind when they see a portrait that’s unfinished, knowing that that represents her life that was unfinished,” he said.
An emptiness that Brandon said can’t be filled, and the life he said that can’t be re-created.