Communion, 2024

Pen and Ink on Strathmore 3-ply plate

9” x 11”

After Goya’s Witches’ Sabbath / The Great He-Goat (1798) a work created to mock the return to church-led medieval fears during the Ominous Decade (1823 -1833), in which superstitious fears of witches and devils were leveraged by the church for political and capital gain.

We find ourselves in a similar state of decay now with the rise of Christian Nationalism in the US. Weaponizing religion to justify stripping the American people of their rights is a thinly veiled form of authoritarianism. It is a dangerous practice that-as evidenced in Goya’s work-we have seen many times before in the western world.

In Communion, the devil is re-imagined as a peaceful teacher-figure for a human boy. He makes known the concept of self-respect, which, while potentially antithetical to the teachings of Christ, is an essential part of providing meaningful love to ‘thy neighbor’. After all, if we are not nurturing ourselves adequately, how can we nurture others?

Doesn’t love need a source from which to flow?