The Crucifixion At Patmos

Here I bring together figures and images that seem to come from different times, sources, and states of consciousness, placing them within a single constructed field. The painting began without a fixed narrative or predetermined intention. Its meaning emerged during the making of the image, and continued to reveal itself afterward, as the elements began to speak to one another.

The background is a grey rendering of Patmos, less as a literal landscape than as a charged setting: an island associated with exile, distance, vision, and revelation. At the center of the painting is a black eagle whose outstretched wings create a cruciform shape. The eagle evokes St. John the Evangelist, traditionally symbolized by that bird and associated with the writing of Revelation at Patmos. This is not an interpretation of Christian scripture. It is simply one layer in a broader image concerned with vision, memory, and witness.

The eagle is hanging in a way that suggests a crucified figure, shifting the image between crucifixion as martyrdom and crucifixion as an act of seeing or bearing witness. Around it, children and other human presences appear in overlapping registers. Some figures feel compassionate, others supplicant and others mildly curious; others seem closer to memory or projection.

I wanted these layers to collapse into one unified rendering without gelling into a single clear narrative. The painting holds fragments of innocence, suffering, prophecy, displacement, and observation in the same visual space. Rather than resolving them, I wanted to preserve their instability. As in other pieces, I arrive at this image before language. In that way, meaning gathers around images only later.