Color of memory

When his name was called at graduation, David Brathwaite ’26 felt his legs turn to rubber; his feet anchors weighing 20 pounds each. But as he crossed the stage to receive his fine arts diploma, he sensed the presence of his late father by his side. 

“There were so many times I wanted to quit, because of a hard class or external factors, and then I would think about how much my dad wanted this for me,” he said. “When I got to shake [President] Spina's hand at graduation, I felt that everything was OK. I knew my dad was there.”

The gifted young artist would have given anything to have his father, William Woodrow Brathwaite Jr. ’72, sitting beside his mother at graduation. His father died in a car accident in 2017, when David was just 13. He didn't live long enough to see his son enroll at his beloved alma mater, where he met his future wife, Debra Ware Brathwaite ’72. He never had the opportunity to admire David's stunning art portfolio featuring more than 50 pieces inspired by memories of him.   

The therapeutic power of Brathwaite's artistry is evident to his mentor and painting professor Jeffrey Jones.

“Losing his father so young and so suddenly, David didn't have the knowledge and skill sets to cope with his loss,” Jones said. “As a young adult and a very sensitive adult, he is processing that loss through his work.”  

As an older parent, William Brathwaite Jr. had retired from his job as a building plans examiner for the city of Columbus by the time David reached middle school. David took it for granted that his dad would pick him up after school and hang out with him on the weekends. His father's presence was such a constant that David responded to the news of his sudden death by exclaiming, “What? We are going to the movies this weekend!” 

During his University of Dayton campus tour, David couldn't help remembering his dad's fond stories of fraternity life as an Alpha Phi Alpha. His mother's enthusiasm was contagious as she reminisced about her Delta Sigma Theta sisters and life at Marycrest Hall when it was still a new building.

He realized then that UD was the right place for him, but he didn't anticipate the full scope of artistic and personal growth that would follow. His style during high school was mostly representational; he framed a portrait of a Renaissance-style figure because he was proud of its meticulous detail.

As a first-year student at UD, David rarely wanted to talk about the loss of his father, let alone paint his portrait. Initially he adhered to a more tight and controlled style of painting, but Jones encouraged him to “switch things up a bit” and try something different.

“When your professor gives you an open floor plan with learning goals, it forces you to think about what you want to do, and it gives you the freedom to pursue that,” he recalled. “That was monumental to me.” 

David felt liberated to craft quick portraits using Crayola markers, for instance, and he fell more deeply in love with the art of portraiture.

“I learned the importance of not just showing the person in realistic detail but capturing their story,” he said.

“With portraiture, there's the intimacy of looking at a person closely and finding out what you can learn from them.” 

Eventually, that gaze turned to his father.

“Professor Jones told me to stop limiting myself and stop boxing up my emotions,” David said.

Jones lost his own father during Brathwaite's sophomore year, and they bonded over their shared grief and renewed sense of purpose.

“I finally understood what he had been holding inside and bottling up,” Jones said. “We started having open conversations about loss and grief — about mourning someone and yet celebrating the morning as the next day happens. Our fathers wouldn't want to keep us down; they would want to push us forward to live the life we were meant to live.”

Brathwaite approached his research into his father's life much as a historian or a journalist would, interviewing his friends, co-workers and relatives.

“For me, it wasn't as much about working through my grief, because I had already mourned the loss,” he said. “It was more about getting to know my father as an adult, and discovering who he was as a person, because I never had the chance to do that. I learned that he loved hanging out with his friends and listening to jazz, and that he loved portraiture and abstract art, especially work with themes of Black culture and Black history.”

Brathwaite's work today is more expressionistic, an explosion of color, as he throws down acrylics, oils and crayon in flashes as fragmented and sporadic as memory itself. His works are as vibrant and as multifaceted as the emotions that sparked them; he creates a collage-like effect by applying 20 to 40 layers of paint, photos and images of faces.

“David's work is extremely original; I have not seen anything like it in the energy he brings to the work and the way he manipulates his material and his mark-making,” Jones said.

“Then there's a deeply focused meditative period where he is reconstructing the images. The entire process is extremely intelligent and extremely innovative.”

As he embarks on a three-year teaching assistantship at the University of Kentucky, Brathwaite hopes to become a teacher who inspires future generations of students just as his UD professors have inspired him.

“I used to be more worried about the final product than the path to get there,” he said. “Now it's less about whether the face is perfect and more about whether it represents what I am trying to say and whether it feels honest. It's more about the journey.”

Image and video courtesy University Marketing.

A version of this article appears in print in the Summer 2026 University of Dayton Magazine, Page 31. EXPLORE THE ISSUE — MORE ONLINE