This represents two women living in different time periods in Providence, Rhode Island: the contemporary actress, Sylvia Anne Soares as well as the early twentieth century painter, Nancy Elizabeth Prophet. Besides her many accomplishments, Prophet was the first (known) African American to attend the Rhode Island School of Design and is now the subject of a traveling retrospective which has given her a new audience and new awareness. Soares wrote and performed a play in which she portrays Prophet, recovering her life and memory from historical records, specifically her Paris diary. I asked Soares to come in character as Prophet to serve as a model for this painting.