Something profoundly disturbing happened during the run-up to the 2024 election. An astonishing number of “red” states quietly rescinded their child labor laws. These laws, on the books for almost a century, were passed following a decades-long muckraking campaign documented by seasoned journalists and photographers. Their extraordinary body of work appeared in popular periodicals and magazines. It horrified the nation and moved the federal government to enact basic laws to protect the safety and welfare of our children. All our children. The States followed suit by enacting their own legislation to meet or exceed the federal requirements. And now, these safeguards were conveniently forgotten, expunged, and violations ignored.

A lifetime in service to newspaper publishing only reinforced my admiration for those muckraking journalists. Revisiting the images of photographer Lewis Hine, whose body of work resides in The Library of Congress, compelled me to paint Hine’s children as they suffer our indifference once again.

Finding their plight unbearable, I chose to cap the series by painting a contemporary child in hopeful anticipation of joy yet to come. Her deliverance, my homage to Raphael, is of course pop-idol Madonna.