“Walking on Air: A Painting That Refuses to Forget”
**Own history**
30x24
acrylic on canvas
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*if interested, email sg@seangarrisonartist.com
serious inquiries only
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9/22/25
What is history? Why do some hold it near? What purpose does it serve? Why do some revere it, while others abhor it?
I painted Walking on Air just outside the Government Center in Minneapolis, where the trial of Derek Chauvin was held for the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020. The act of creating in that space was not a choice but a necessity. History had conditioned me to expect disappointment - that yet again, justice would fall short for Black lives in America. I prepared to paint within grief, in the midst of what I call a “loverising,” what others call an uprising.
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As the verdict drew near, my canvas absorbed that weight: deep reds, muted shadows, the language of sorrow I knew too well. And then, the unexpected happened. When the guilty verdict was announced, the air itself transformed. A collective exhale swept through the city - cheers, car horns, tears mingled together in a rare convergence of justice and relief. My brush answered instinctively, reaching for blues, oranges, and radiant tones. In those colors lived hope, release, and the fragile glimpse of a new possibility.
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Why do we remember? Because forgetting silences the truth of what was felt. Since its creation, Walking on Air has been described by many as a mirror of grief, hope, and cautious relief - what words could not capture, the painting made visible. Some have likened its force to Picasso’s Guernica, another work that carried forward the memory of violence so that history could not deny or erase it.
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As we are just beyond the five-year anniversary of George Floyd’s death and almost six years since the verdict, Walking on Air endures as both a memory and a message. We remember so that the past does not vanish into silence. We remember because art carries forward what must not be forgotten. This painting is testimony: it reminds us of what it meant for that day and for forthcoming opportunities to create a just and healthy country who, when it intones the word "hope" - everyone can hear it, everyone can believe it. Everyone can breathe it.
