Amanda van Scoyoc

Painting of Darius Poteat

I started this painting of Darius a month after he was gone. I painted it mainly for Eli, but also because I thought that staring at his face while placing paint on a canvas might be healing. It also just seemed like Darius deserved a portrait, and he deserved to be surrounded by blue skies, leaves, and those weird orange spikey flowers that bloom in July and August in North Carolina.

Sometimes, while painting, I would think about how strange it is that this is as old as Darius will ever be. When I paint Eli or me, I imagine being old, looking back on the painting, and exclaiming to Eli, “look how young we were.” But with Darius, this is how old he will be forever. The painting is the same as the memory.