ARTIST! ARTIST!

Can you tell us something about M. Giffin, the creator of the work of art that accompanied the fiction piece “Color Struck” (by Alyce Miller, July 17)? I cut it out to frame it. The image of the mother cradling her child is so arresting, I cannot take my eyes off it.

TERRY FISHER

Benicia

Editor’s note: Matthew Giffin is an illustrator/artist who recently moved from New York City to Toronto. His work has appeared in numerous magazines and on book covers for Oxford University Press. “The thing that struck me about the story was how the issue of skin color is all-encompassing in the United States, and that this issue had filtered down to the black mother and her albino child was tragic,” Giffin says. “I wanted to do a picture where the woman would have dignity in her blackness, at the same time she would be looking up at the sky and there would be a question of whether she was asking God to make it work no matter what, or asking God why it happened to her.”