My latest series of paintings, Benedictus, are palimpsests built from reclaimed shipping crates, topped with graffiti tags and stencils, and layered with other text and images of my own. The final layer depicts hands making various signs of blessing. The reference is to ancient religion icons, but the hands are contemporary. I’m trying to blur the lines between the sacred and profane, and to illuminate the idea that ordinary people should be a be a blessing to each other.
This series is an outgrowth of some experimentation I began during the COVID19 lockdown. I was searching for a way to disrupt my normal practice, and came upon the idea to place wood panels made from reclaimed shipping crates in Denver’s alleys where I knew they would get marked up. I stenciled the word “illegal” on each of the boards as a prompt to get the anonymous interaction started. After a few months I retrieved the panels and layered my own text (most derived from current news reports) and images over the graffiti. These paintings are the result.
