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Black & White · 2024
Black Church
In a private collection
The church as dark form — architecture of devotion held in near-black, the spiritual building after the light inside has stopped being the whole point.
“Black Church' lets the unknown speak softly, inviting us into a landscape of shifting truths.”
Black Church (2025) is a study in presence — a quiet, monumental form rendered through darkness and restraint. This 60 x 48 inch mixed media painting, part of the Greyscale Series, is minimal in color but rich in atmosphere. Inspired by the silhouette of sacred structures, the work reimagines spiritual space through form, surface, and the poetics of shadow.
The central mass rises like a spire — slightly off-center, slightly faded — constructed from layers of matte black, graphite gray, and charcoal. The surface is textured with scraped lines and subtle abrasions that give the structure age, wear, and mystery. A faint outline of a doorway, nearly invisible, hints at entrance — or the impossibility of one.
I created Black Church while reflecting on quietude and reverence — not as religious iconography, but as emotional space. It is not about any one faith. It is about what it means to build something inward: to create a chamber for feeling, for reflection, for stillness.
The work shares visual restraint with Ad Reinhardt’s “Black Paintings,” but where Reinhardt erases, I leave traces. My blacks are not flat — they breathe, they crackle, they hum.
This painting invites you to slow down. To approach, not solve. Black Church isn’t a monument to belief. It’s a monument to the act of seeking.
Where to see it. In person at RituStudio, Phoenix, by appointment. Represented by Jarrow & Goodman, Los Angeles.
The space it needs
- Wall
- At least 8 ft wide
- Ceiling
- 9 ft or more
- Light
- Any lighting — monochrome palette is lighting-agnostic
- Daylight
- Near-black with silver passages, it holds its color, but strong direct sun turns the darks gray and flat. Angled light is better, catching the texture and letting the silver rise out of the black.
Lives best in
Hotel lobby 5/5
At 4 by 5 feet, Black Church commands a lobby wall the way a devotional object commands a nave, and its monochromatic silver-on-black texture reads with authority across the full distance a lobby demands.
Office 5/5
In a private office, the near-black field and crackled silver reward sustained attention over time, giving an executive or a creative a surface that does not perform cheerfulness but holds the room steady.
Details
- Size
- 4 × 5 ft (W × H)
- Medium
- Acrylic on canvas
- Year
- 2024
- Collection
- Black & White
- Palette
- Near Black · Shadow Depth · Silver
- Weight
- About 45 lb
Its ArtGram
ArtGram.Sheaf
- Texture4
- Form5
- Colour range1
- Palette4.2
- Contrast3.7
- Abstraction Quotient-1.5
