I Made Him Promise That I Would Never Work Tobacco Again

 

Rebecca A. Stone-Danahy.  I Made Him Promise That I Would Never Work Tobacco Again.  Mixed Media with Image Transfer on Arches Hot Press Paper.  September 2010. 

I started this artwork about a year ago. While working on it at my studio during a gallery hop, a woman came into my space and began sharing with me her personal story of growing up on a tobacco farm. She shared about family, culture, and the intense labor in harvesting flue-cured tobacco. As her story unfolded, I decided that this work of art would be about the labor of tobacco and the people behind tobacco as a product. Before my guest left my space, she shared with me her story of accepting her husband's proposal for marriage. As her soon-to-be fiancee was on his knee, she informed me that she made him promise that she would never work tobacco again. When he promised, she accepted the engagement!

I appreciated this story so much that I decided the imagery in the piece would revolve around it.  I began by layering images onto the blank surface and then building up the tobacco landscape around and over the imagery.  As part of my process, I use both historical images and drawing simultaneously as I build my image for the sole purpose of telling a story.  My images in this artwork are centered around the labor, hard work, and people behind the sale of tobacco in the early and mid-20th Century.