According to the Associated Press, the artist behind the President Barack Obama “HOPE” poster, Shepard Fairey, recently spoke about his feelings towards the President.
Nearly eight years after the Black Senator from Illinois was voted into the White House, Fairey says Obama went “quiet on a lot of things.”
“I think he ended up probably being very frustrated with the things he encountered,” Fairey told the AP. ” I think history will be fairly kind of his presidency, but I want things to move further in the direction that he promised as a campaigner.”
Fairey’s now iconic HOPE portrait was comprised of a stencil illustration of President Obama in a minimal combination of beige, blue and red, featuring the word ‘hope’ at the bottom, instantly becoming the image synonymous with Obama’s first run for presidency.
Fairey, who has voiced his support of Bernie Sanders in this year’s presidential election, says while Obama is an “amazing communicator,” he feels he could have been more aggressive.
“Even if [Obama] was met with gridlock in government, in Congress—if he had been as outspoken as he was as a campaigner—I would give him a pass on not being able to push through some of the progressive things I hoped he would.”
