This talk explores Ethiopian artist Gebre Kristos Desta's last work, made in Lawton Oklahoma. The familiar narrative of his life is that his time in Oklahoma was marred in tragedy, and that he died prematurely in 1981.
This paper reveals new research into the immensely prolific time he spent in Lawton. At the very end of his life, Kristos was working on a riotously colorful mural depicting the rising sun. His last works in Oklahoma reveal an artist who was not wallowing in exile, but committed to the inspirational and redemptive potential of painting to the very end.