Musings on the Creation of America's Daughter

by Becky Scott

Today, I present Becky Scott’s: America’s Daughter, 2025, Washington, DC, USA. Opaque watercolor and oil pen on wood. This artwork is available for purchase, please message contact@dcsentenceclub.com and our excellent email person will get back to you.

Let me take you on a journey into my mind and walk you along the road to discover what I was thinking while I created my naked lady. The lady I like to call America’s Daughter.

March 2024: I challenged myself to copy a painting in the National Gallery of Art so I might one day be one of those people who do in-person studies of the art there with gawking tourists to witness my excellent skills. I selected Egon Schiele’s: Standing nude with a Patterned Robe, 1917, Vienna, Austria, which is opaque watercolor and charcoal on wove paper, as my muse. I bought a postcard print from the gift shop. There was no need to get something bigger if the plan was to paint my own masterpiece anyway.

April 2024: My dear, dear, dear friend gifted me dozens of boards of different sized plywood. Fancy stuff, I know. One, he had already drilled holes and hooked wire into. Perfect for painting a naked lady.

May-June 2025: I lived- emphasis on lived, in the past tense - in a (dirty) basement in Washington DC and began to paint her. I’ve never painted one painting at a time, I always require at least one extra painting so I don’t waste the colorful substance that binds my soul to this body (paint). This second painting; it can be a little more chaotic, less defined. I needed that, since copying her exactly was grating and pushing a muscle of neatness, cleanliness, staying inside the lines-ness that I don’t love flexing.

My solution was to paint her face. The second painting of America’s Daughter is flipped over tall-wise, was painted face up and is presented upside down.

Still May-June 2024: Alas, living in Washington DC in the summer of 2024 meant realizing worldwide horrors. Kamala Harris was an internet star bounding us towards a great new age. It was, and still is, a cataclysmic, pattern breaking, heart reviving time. You may note Kamala’s name painted above her head, almost as a crown. This was my way of manifesting good fortune and a presidency for her. We all know that is not the timeline we live in.

In short, EVERYTHING I was feeling was reflected in creating the face of America’s Daughter. The face itself is several layers deep. I filled in my emotions with words when color and lines were not expressive enough. “It’s hard to live in this world when you have an ounce of FUCKING EMPATHY” and “put Becky in a cage and she’ll find a way to crawl out the other side” are two of the quotes that are currently most visible.

Last summer, I was originally going to paint her robe as the Palestine flag; in my bones, that didn’t feel exactly right. So, the ‘robe,’ her shawl, wrapping, piece of trashed fabric, became the flag of the United States of America. Because that’s who I am. A brash, walking flag of what its like to be an American Girl (Doll). I am a daughter, one of millions, of America. I hate to brag, but my family tree goes back on this land further than the founding fathers. I was born in this hopefully not god foresaken country, I love my home deeply, and yet things happen every day that make me want to rage and crawl and bark and scream at people to stop violence, to be kind. To have an OUNCE, as previously stated, of compassion for others.

Last summer, I painted my deepest desires and wrote down my secrets for the frame on both sides. I then covered those truths I lay bare in more watercolor, let them be washed away.

Summer ended. Wars continued. Kamala did not become president. I didn’t touch that painting for 9 months until I moved. I’m still in DC, don’t worry. I just live above ground now! I’m out of the English basement and see the birds and the sun. Before the move, she sat in storage behind a couch. Now she is proudly displayed above my fireplace.

March 2025: I finally filled in the flag. I painted 53 stars; one for each state, one for Washington DC, one for Puerto Rico, and one for every other territory and land that the US has conquested, violated, taken. Claimed to be helping.

Presently, May 2025: The front is mostly finished. It needs to be sealed and I might wax some of it. I LOVE an encaustic. The daughter’s face I am still considering. I see her smiling through the layers of grief. I wonder if she might yet have a chance for peace and happiness. I painted her right side up but present it upside down, as it is in real life, because that’s how life is to me. Upside down, sideways, backwards.

To close, thank you for your time on this journey of my more quiet feelings. If I may, I would like to dedicate this painting, America’s Daughter, to the First People, the indigenous and native Americans.

With love and laughter, we are well.

Signed, Becky the Scott