Sherman Beck employs the genre of portraiture as a way to memorialize African American heroes. Here, he depicts a serious and stern faced image of Frederick Douglass, national abolitionist leader, orator, writer, and social reformer. “I liked doing the research on Fredrick Douglas,” says Beck. This portrait pays homage to the fierce look of determination Douglas wears in virtually all of the photographs and paintings of him that exist in the public record. The background on which Douglas’s face appears is reminiscent of the background Beck utilizes for the works in his Mask series. The stacking of angular geometric forms lends itself to pareidolia, or the impression that faces are visible where they do not actually exist.