As Winston Pingeon fought off rioters on January 6, his eyes burning and his body throbbing, the former US Capitol Police officer thought to himself, I might not make it home today.
Twelve hours later, he did—forever changed.
His physical injuries healed long before the mental and emotional scars, and it took a while for Pingeon, SPA/BA ’16, to verbalize his feelings. Instead, he decided to paint them.
Art has always been an escape for the Massachusetts native, who was never without a sketchbook or a box of watercolors as a child. After the insurrection—which led to the deaths of five officers and left another 140 injured—art became therapy, a way for Pingeon to work through the trauma of the largest single-day mass assault of law enforcement officers in American history.
“It was like, ‘Let me just get some of this out—let me just put some of my experience on paper, because I don’t really have the words to describe what happened,’” Pingeon says.
In the weeks after January 6, he completed a pair of self-portraits. In one, Pingeon stands in the middle of a deserted New Jersey Avenue on the evening of January 6, the Capitol dome glowing defiantly overhead. Visible amid black riot gear and a face mask, Pingeon’s piercing blue eyes tell the story he wasn’t yet ready to articulate—one of sadness, exhaustion, and terror.
In the other, he proudly stands in salute in his ceremonial dress uniform on Inauguration Day. It’s nearly the same spot on the West Front of the Capitol where a rioter tried to bludgeon him with a flagpole just 15 days earlier. A black mourning band covers Pingeon’s badge—a tribute to fallen officers.
“I am grateful to have survived, but there will always be part of me that was left at the Capitol that day,” he says.
Pingeon painted the Capitol for the first time in 2017, shortly after the justice and law major graduated from the police academy. The building quickly became his muse. “It’s so ornate and beautiful, and each time I look at it, I see something different,” he says. “But it’s also technically challenging, which is exciting to me as an artist.”
He has painted the Capitol nearly 30 times—at sunrise and sunset, from the east and the west, framed in autumnal foliage and cherry blossoms, punctuated by an American flag flapping in the breeze and a police cruiser rolling past. Even though his post–January 6 paintings have a darker feel, the Capitol “remains a symbol of hope and democracy that represents the best in all of us,” Pingeon says.
“I have a complicated relationship with the building—but what’s not complicated is that it’s a special, sacred place that will always have my respect and my love.”
As a self-taught painter, Pingeon has always struggled with knowing when a piece is done.
“I have a tendency to overwork it,” he says. “I’m learning how to step back and say, ‘This is what I wanted to achieve, and I’m proud of the result.’”
Nine months after the attack on the Capitol, Pingeon surveyed his law enforcement career in the same manner and decided he had accomplished what he set out to do.
“At the end of a shift, [officers] sign off with the radio code 10–7—‘10–7, have a good night. Be safe,’” he says. “It wasn’t until my last day in uniform—October 7, 2021—that I made the connection. I felt it was a sign from the universe telling me I was doing the right thing.”
Before he returned to Boston, Pingeon donated three of his paintings, the boots he wore on January 6, and a collection of patches and challenge coins to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. He also contributed a painting of the Capitol inspired by the insurrection to the National Law Enforcement Museum’s new exhibition, Officers as Artists: The Creative Expression of Those Who Serve, which runs through August 30, 2025.
Pingeon now works in public safety technology. His newer paintings reflect his new life in New England—sailboats and seascapes—but he remains grateful for how his five years in uniform shaped him and his art: “I would not be who I am without all I was able to do and see at the Capitol.”