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“Waiting” by Ernest Crichlow (American) - Lithograph / 1968 - Delaware Art Museum (Wilmington) #WomenInArt #ErnestCrichlow #Crichlow #DelawareArtMuseum #Arte #1960s #Lithograph #BlackArt #art #artText #BlueskyArt #PortraitofaGirl #AmericanArt #RacialJusticeArt #AfricanAmericanArtist #AmericanArtist
A black-and-white lithograph centers on the head and shoulders of a Black girl set against wide, unprinted paper. Her skin is modeled with velvety grays and deep shadows, plus bright highlights on the forehead, nose, and cheekbone that make the face feel carefully lit and 3D. Short, textured hair is gathered upward, leaving one ear visible. She turns to our left, focused as if listening or watching for something beyond the frame. Her expression is quiet, serious, and tired in a way that suggests endurance rather than drama. A pale shirt is loosely drawn at the shoulders, with a few darker strokes and speckled marks suggesting folds and shadow. Over the entire figure lies a rigid grid of barbed wire with horizontal and vertical strands across her face and clothing, with twisted knots and sharp points at the intersections. The wire lines are thin but insistently repeated, so the barrier is a restraint made visible. Made in 1968, the work turns a single portrait into a statement about imposed limits. The girl is presented with dignity and specificity, yet seen through a structure designed to divide. The wire grid is both literal fencing and a compressed symbol for segregation, surveillance, and the everyday boundaries that define where safety, freedom, and possibility are permitted to exist. American artist Ernest Crichlow heightens that meaning through stark color contrasts of black against white as well as soft human shading against hard linear constraint, so our eyes keep moving between the child’s living face and the cold geometry that interrupts it. The title, “Waiting,” lands as a condition as much as a moment. Is she waiting to pass, to be allowed, ot to simply be treated as fully human? And because her gaze stays fixed outward, still, alert, and unresolved, the image holds tension between confinement and persistence, likely asking us to notice not only the barrier, but the person who lives behind it.
January 17, 2026 at 10:56 PM