Throughout history, portrait paintings have been commissioned to depict those with wealth and status—people with power. As the only woman on Oklahoma’s death row for nearly twenty years, Brenda Andrew is not the typical subject of a portrait painting.

But portraiture also has a long history of being used to bring dignity and attention to the person being painted. When Emily Davis Adams—a visual artist who specializes in representational painting—was approached by Brenda’s legal team and learned of her story, she felt compelled to do just that. 

Emily was drawn to the idea of using a painting to affect a story. Much of the narrative surrounding Brenda’s case, in courts and in the public, has been influenced by prosecutors who viewed her gender identity as something to weaponize. The accompanying media frenzy around Brenda’s trial only further sensationalized the prosecutors’ tactics. Emily hoped that painting a portrait of Brenda could, in her words, “help correct this existing narrative that has been so influenced by gender bias and sex shaming” and show Brenda in a more humanistic light.

For Emily, whose recent work focuses on representations and characterizations of the female form in history and in contemporary visual culture, paintings can have an intimacy and significance that differs from a photographic representation: “A painting is a handmade object, less dependent on mechanical processes and more resistant to being interpreted as documentation. For these reasons, a painting can lend itself to allegory and narrative in a way that emphasizes meaning and empathetic response.”

While there are examples of portraiture in photography that operate on a similar level, in this particular case Emily felt that painting offered a more compelling antithesis to the existing photographic images of Brenda, most of which are taken from courtroom and prison documentation that play into the stereotypes and accusations emphasized in her prosecution.

Initially, Emily planned to meet with Brenda in-person. She felt that sharing a space with Brenda would help her paint a more honest and current portrayal, embedding the idea of humanization into the process. However, the prison refused to grant Emily entry. For Emily, this denial “really drove home the extent to which [Brenda’s] story and representation is so tightly controlled and shielded against people working in her interest.”

As a result, Emily decided to work from a photo of Brenda. Emily had access to mug shots and photos taken in courtrooms and prison, but felt that these portrayals of Brenda were inextricable from tabloid news and the existing, twisted narrative of Brenda’s case, which only fed into the sensationalism and dehumanization that led to Brenda being convicted and sentenced to death. Using these images would have been in stark contrast to one of Emily’s primary goals, which was to “humanize a person who has been dehumanized in the process of her incarceration, in the court and in the media.”

Instead, Emily chose to work with a photo of Brenda taken before her incarceration. It was a family photo, which particularly resonated with Emily. She also appreciated the graininess and blurriness of the photo, an effect that she intentionally preserved in her final work. Emily felt this source material “emphasized the sense of Brenda having a history and perhaps a story we don’t have full access to.” The visual effects also “suggested that Brenda’s story is still in the process of going in or out of view.” 

With regard to the color palette, Emily started the painting on a pink ground and brought in pink as a background and unifying color choice “to both play on and emphasize” the many ways in which our culture is still bound to oppressive expectations that conform gender to a standardized set of icons, symbols, and characteristics.

The final portrait of Brenda has been used across various platforms, in the growing movement to save Brenda’s life. Of the experience of painting the portrait, Emily says she was moved by the challenges the project brought to her own practice. The “very direct connection between a painting and another person’s life put a meaningfulness into the process” that she says informed her work in a new and powerful way.