Strings – Frances Folsom Cleveland, Jack of Clubs
1998, oil and acrylic on canvas, 64 x 70”

Frances was the daughter of Oscar Folsom, Grover Cleveland’s long-time friend. When Frances was eleven, Oscar died. Grover was appointed administrator of his estate and guided young Frances’ education. Forty-nine-year-old President Grover Cleveland married twenty-one-year-old Frances Folsom on 2 June 1886 in the White House. She became the youngest First Lady and the object of much curiosity. When Grover was asked why he hadn’t married before, he replied he was waiting for his wife to grow up.

Despite baseless rumors that Frances was unhappy and abused, she delighted in her role as First Lady. When Grover was defeated in the 1888 Presidential campaign, she defiantly announced that she would be First Lady again in four years. In 1892, Grover became the only President to win two nonconsecutive terms, and Frances returned triumphantly to Washington. She was a very popular public figure and held a great deal of influence over her robust husband. In Frances’s portrait, it is clear who is pulling the strings. Five years after Grover’s death, Frances became the first presidential widow to remarry.

Stop-Action Reaction – Jacqueline Kennedy, King of Hearts
1997, oil and acrylic on canvas, 70 x 56”

In the 1940s, Harold Edgerton invented stroboscopic photography, which allowed him to create “stop-action” images such as a bullet piercing a card. In 1963, television made it possible for an entire nation to witness the stop-action assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and Jackie’s reaction. In a deck of cards, the King of Hearts is the “suicide king” — so-called because he is nearly always thrusting a sword through his head.

Some called JFK suicidal because he insisted on riding in public without bulletproof protection. I painted two swords for the theory that two bullets were fired from different directions. This painting represents the instant President Kennedy was hit. Jackie doesn’t know what has happened yet, but she knows it’s bad. The painting is meant to capture the last moment of innocence for Jackie — and for an entire generation.