Riveting paintings dominate the dining room of the Zunons’ home in Guilderland. They illustrate the story of a little blue boy in an African village. "His skin was blue," said Elizabeth Zunon, the artist who painted the pictures. The paintings were inspired by a story she knew as a child. "It’s about accepting people for their own personality," she said.

Zunon painted the series of pictures as a senior project at Guilderland High School. She went on to graduate from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2006 and is currently writing and illustrating books for children. Her art will be featured at Albany County’s celebration of African-American History Month on Feb. 29, which is following the national theme of multiculturalism.

Zunon grew up straddling two cultures. Born in Albany, she moved with her family to the Ivory Coast of Africa when she was two months old. "That’s where my father is from," she said. "Both of my parents had been there for years. They raised me and my little brother there...We’d come to Albany for six weeks every summer to see my mother’s parents." It wasn’t hard to have one foot in each world, speaking French in West Africa and English in America. "It was the way I grew up," Zunon said matter-of-factly. One constant was her love of art. "I was always drawing — at recess, after school," she recalled. "My friend and I would draw images of horses and sell them at recess for a quarter." The Zunons moved to the United States when Elizabeth was 12. She entered Farnsworth Middle School as an eighth-grader and then graduated from the high school in 2002. Zunon became friends with girls whose families came from other countries, as diverse as Bangladesh and Russia. "We were outsiders but we had our own multi-cultural, multi-ethnic group. We weren’t in the cool crowd with the cheerleaders and football players," she said. Her art teacher, Anne Brown, encouraged Zunon to keep painting and to think about a career in the fine arts. She was accepted at one of the country’s top programs. Her first year at RISD, the foundation year, was "very intense," said Zunon. "They worked you to the bone," she said, describing eight-hour drawing classes where she worked with charcoal, sketching figure models. She describes her work now as "painterly realism with some stylization." "I like to use oil paints on canvas," she said. Zunon traveled to Italy where she studied religious iconography. She said she is most influenced by Caravaggio and Rembrandt, both 17th-Century masters. "The paintbrush is my most important tool," said Zunon. "I use traditional but unconventional imagery." For example, when she paints fabric, she portrays, rather than the folds and shadows, the graphic design of the material. "I like to combine realistic portraiture with flat, bold graphics," she said. Universal themes Zunon decided to create children’s books for her life’s work. "I’ve always loved reading children’s books," she said. "I want to incorporate people from around the world — different colors, ethnicities, and religions." She’s had nothing published yet but one book is complete and another is underway. Zunon lives in New York City and supports herself by working in a flower shop. "It’s a good day job," she said. "I don’t have to sit at a computer in a cubicle; I’m around bright plants and nice smells." Her first book is about family traditions and the history associated with the making of chocolate. "It’s not commercial, like here," said Zunon. She likes to illustrate themes that apply to children around the world. "Any child can associate with a special family tradition," she said. The book she’s currently working on is about the effects of war on a child. "A few years ago," she said, "a civil war broke out on the Ivory Coast. My family and I watched on TV and spoke to our relatives and friends...It was hard for us to believe this horrible thing was happening to this wonderful place." She went on, "Children don’t understand war, just how it affects their lives." She gave the example of a school being burned down, disrupting the children’s lives. One scene in the book is of a girl walking through her war-torn neighborhood. "Everyone hides in their home," said Zunon. "Everything is dreary. Even the leaves are hiding. The branches of the trees are bare." The girl decides to make garlands of leaves. She climbs a tree to wrap the colorful garland of leaves — each a bold fabric — on the branches of the tree. Three birds observe the girl from their perch on the tree. Another of Zunon’s paintings also involves three little birds; it was inspired by a song of that name. It shows her and her brother, when they were younger, with Abidjan, then the capital city of the Ivory Coast, behind them. Zunon recited the lyrics to the song: "Three little birds sat on my window and told me everything would be all right." She painted the picture after she had finished college and couldn’t find a job. She worked hard on it, she said, and found a purpose. "The way it really is" The founder of Black History Month, the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History, has set the theme for this year’s observance, "Carter G. Woodson and the Origins of Multiculturalism." Although the United States has always been racially and ethnically diverse, the association says, it has not always recognized its multicultural history but, until the end of the last century, saw itself largely as the flowering of the Anglo-Saxon culture and prided itself on allowing immigrants to adopt the American way. Woodson, born in 1875 in Virginia to former slaves, pursued education against all odds, finally earning a Ph.D. in history from Harvard in 1912. He came to believe that the role of his people was ignored or misrepresented by scholars and founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915. He believed that history was not the mere gathering of facts but that it must include social conditions and arrive at a reasonable interpretation of the facts. His research and books preserved the history of African Americans, which he believed would stem racial prejudice. He was often ostracized by African-American educators of the time who thought it was wrong to teach black history as separate from a general view of American history. "Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished," wrote Woodson, "lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history." Zunon’s view of America was shaped from Africa. "When I was growing up on the Ivory Coast, I thought of the United States as a big melting pot — so many cultures all living the American Dream," she said. "The Ivory Coast was the African version of that; so many came to live a better life there than in their own countries." When Zunon moved to America, she didn’t see much diversity. "Guilderland High School was a typical suburban school," she said. "I didn’t see much diversity." She went on, "I’m interested in how people associate or disassociate themselves to a culture...I’m interested in similarities between African-Americans in America and Africans in Africa...These two peoples on two different continents are trying to associate themselves on the other side of the ocean." For example, she said, when she lived on the Ivory Coast, she saw Africans "obsessed with basketball and Michael Jordan...and popular American culture." And then, in the United States, she sees black Americans wearing African clothing and head wraps. She has expressed this in some of her artwork. For example, she painted a series of four different women in four different head wraps. The first three are African women; the last is an American woman in Times Square. "The way women wear head wraps in Africa is totally different," she said. Zunon’s ultimate goal, she said, is to write and illustrate children’s books showing "the way it really is — not the way it has been depicted." "We need to explore the differences through ourselves," she said. Zunon believes such books will be valued by grownups as well. **** Albany County will celebrate "Carter G. Woodson and the Origins of Multiculturalism," the national theme of this year’s African-American History Month, on Friday, Feb. 29, at 12:30 p.m. at 112 State Street. Maxine Fantroy-Ford, principal of Albany High School is the keynote speaker. Elizabeth Zunon will present her artwork. The Albany High School Gospel Chorus will perform, and Dr. Mildred Chang will recite poetry. The event is free and open to the public. Since seating is limited, those who want to attend should call 447-7010.