Portrait of Frederick Douglass - Finished

This is a portrait of a young Frederick Douglass. It will be the first of an experimental series of portraits that will be included in my exhibition in January. Right now I'm planning to do about three of them. The inspiration behind this and the others I'll do is, if not obvious, a take on a very classical look in painting combined with something of a more contemporary look, I guess you could say a little "classical meets contemporary" look, which is not exactly anything new, you could probably make the argument that all art made today is a "classical meets contemporary" look. Anyways, I wanted to create this look while paying homage to great African American figures in history. The writing along the bottom of the painting is distorted copy of Frederick Douglass' actual signature.