Using an everyday discarded object painted with gestural brushwork, Graveyard Warriors, Sad Day presents a crowded scene at a cemetery. The painting is densely packed with figures, trees, tombstones, and a rolling horizon line. In the top section, a multitude of wavy gold shapes ascend from land to sky, possibly representing spirits moving into the afterlife. This artwork serves as a regretful witness to a mass casualty event, whether real or imagined, demonstrating the chaotic and cacophonous dance of birth, death, and all that transpires in between. Purvis Young was a self-taught artist who worked on found materials scavenged from his neighborhood streets. Inspired by the proliferation of mural movements prominent in communities of color in the late 1960s across the U.S., Young began his own project of painting and installing work in abandoned buildings within his economically distressed community of Overtown, Florida.