Ona Judge's Forgotten Story

It was in July of 2018. It began like all my other paintings; I dove in, letting the paint's random marks and shapes tell me where to go. A face emerged; I chased the features, realizing it was a portrait of George Washington.

I was stunned and confused. Not because I was painting something that surprised me, I often paint things that I don't understand. This time, not only didn't I care about this figure, his stance and uniform irritated me. Sure, during that year, in fact, since 2016, I was thinking deeply about what America was and what it had become, but I saw this cartoonish homage to this political figure and didn't get it.

Blocked, I faced the piece to the wall and forgot about it. I moved on to other paintings.

In the course of a few months, shuffling things from one part of my studio to another, I would come across "that George Washington thing," as I called it in my mind. It occurred to me to turn it upside down and obliterate what was there, start something new, but I didn't. I would push to the back of the studio and carry on with other work.

One day, I was standing in front of the vast Mark Bradford mixed media/collage piece "Helter Skelter I" at The Broad, feeling the layered surface's history with my eyes. Lost in thought, a voice in my head said, "and what are you going to do about "that George Washington thing" in your studio?" My heart sank for a moment. I walked away from I had been standing and sat down, feeling defeated.

Sitting there, from nowhere, I heard the tin voice whisper, "maybe you should read up about George Washington." I got on my phone and started researching the life of George Washington. The human beings he held as property.

Reading on, I came to the details about Ona Judge born c., 1773 was a dower slave to Betty, a seamstress, and Andrew Judge by the white, an English tailor indentured servant at Mount Vernon.

Ona went to live at the manor house at the age of 10. She became an expert at needlework and eventually became Mrs. Washington's body servant.

In March 1796, Mrs. Washington informed Ona that she would be given as a wedding present to her granddaughter, who had married English expatriate Thomas Law.

Ona Judge planned her escape, one night, in May of 1796, as the Washingtons were having her dinner, she slipped away and was hidden by friends until she could find passage on a Northbound ship.

This history, what life was like for someone like Ona Judge or all the other people who were slaves, was never a part of what I learned in school nor how it affected the way this country developed.

I am still woefully ignorant about the ongoing repercussions of slavery woven into the fabric of our lives today. I have a lot of learning to do.

After learning about Ona Judge, finishing this painting became clear to me. The spin we were fed about the founding fathers' noble intentions was just a twisted fairy tale—the chopping down the cherry tree, all of it, made-up nonsense. People who lived, suffered, and died under the weight of this horrid structure of oppression are nameless and faceless, as are the people who suffer it to this day.