In my studio listening to a lecture on ethics and morality, i heard a story about a conversation between God and an angel. in this story, God commands the angel to destroy a city filled with evil, exclaiming that good men did nothing to stop the bad. the angel argues, “the good could not have stopped the evil, no one would have listened.” God’s response, “they could have tried."
it still sends chills up my spine.
the angels in the painting are a device. this painting is not about religion, it is about a sense of an existential threat, real or imagined, caused by our chaotic political climate. the battle of good
vs. evil.
“the mystic chords of memory...will yet swell the chorus of the union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” —Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address
From the exhibition catalog. The painting was exhibited with the title, "A painting in search of a title, 2018; oil on canvas; 66 x 60" "