Deborah Whitehead

On July 18, 1984 I was living in San Diego. On this day my family and I witnessed the horror of this mass shooting as it played out on TV. Families, children, babies shot in a McDonald’s. This happy place turned into a blood bath by a man with an Uzi. The image of a young boy’s body next to his bicycle has never left me. I put the orange flowers in his place in my painting. Thirty-seven years and nothing has changed.

Deborah Whitehead is based in Lambertville , New Jersey