The depression era gave us many criminals who, for fun, robbed banks and killed people. This portrait is of a pair of criminals who if it weren’t for a 1960’s movie about their lives would have been forgotten and not glamorized achieving mythic status as star-crossed lovers in our pop culture. Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow criss-crossed the Midwest in the early 1930’s, robbing mostly gas stations and grocery stores and not the banks they were accused of. The gang, along with various accomplices, killed as many as 15 people before the two were gunned down in a curtain of over 150 gun shots. In the aftermath, eight witnesses came forward and claimed that Bonnie had never fired a gun and was only guilty of being an accessory to stealing a getaway car.
The slogan I used in this portrait quilt is lifted from the 1960’s movie starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway.