Benediction

Benediction, tells the story of a group of angels that have been cast down to earth, and bound to the skins of black boys and men. Their task is to serve as witnesses to the traumas and triumphs that they experience while in this guise. This developing series is my personal response—as a black man—to the global pandemic, and the many horrific realities of black existence that the darkness of this plague has elucidated for the entire world to witness.

This is a project of storytelling, involving some imaginative fiction and mythology in an effort to mine or history and present for a Truth that is often challenging to encounter. This is also a project about healing. I believe that healing in its truest and most holistic form comes to those of us that submit to the arduous process of uncovering and confronting the truth of our situations. For black boys and men, my hope is that they see themselves in the monumental angelic figures that I draw and paint – that they realize the depths and even the limitations of their humanity, and that they embrace these realities, contemplatively and without apology.