Artist Statement:

On December 2, 1859, radical abolitionist John Brown stood on the scaffold awaiting the drop of the gallows floor. He was sentenced to hang in Virginia because a month and a half earlier he and a mixed-race group of radical abolitionists took over the federal armory in Harpers Ferry with the aim of creating an insurrection that would end the Slave Power. He stood for a full ten minutes with the hood over his head and the noose around his neck. He waited patiently as the military gathered information to witness his execution. He had already issued this final statement: “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.” The work in this show expands from that ten minutes spanning the deep past into our present.

Folklore and myth seep into this telling. Stories are alive, they are promiscuous. They slip the borders. John Brown’s Vision on the Scaffold is steeped in American history and storytelling. I created a series of portraits of the people around John Brown as if they were my sitters. Behind them outside, beyond the window, something else transpires: a reference to something older, or bigger that casts light on their story. The landscape is an essential character in the work. The consideration of tree time is necessary. The slow perception of trees creates a longer narrative arc. Tree time allows connective tissue to reach over centuries.