Scott LoBaido

After driving past the base of the WTC around 8:00 am that fateful morning, I made my way back to my studio in St. George when I heard the news of the attack.

I rushed to my daily hangout, the Cargo Cafe where we watched the hell occurring across the bay. Days later I needed to work out the severe pain from this horror I witnessed, so I decided to paint something epic. I spent a dozen days, all day and all night working on it. Since the Cargo Cafe was the first place many who made it off the ferry from Ground Zero had stopped covered in dust, and needed a wake-up whiskey, I decided to hang this gigantic painting over the bar.

This piece was rushed. It needed to be up right away while the pain was settling in. The human subjects have a few physical imperfections because I was more concerned with getting it finished and displayed than I was about critics. The horses were borrowed from the epic artist Rubens.

“Depicted in the painting are a young fireman who lived on my block, Brian Cannizarro, Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and NYPD Sgt. Rodney Gillis. Both Brian and Rodney perished on that day.