"The Moment the Spirit of God Leaves the Body of Christ, Conceptualized"

Semi Abstract Death

This painting originated rather unexpectedly. In January of 2020, shortly before the Covid-19 pandemic, I was awakened around 11pm by an irregular heart rhythm. My heart felt like there were little fish flopping around in it. My wife at the time insisted that I be rushed to the ER upon where they immediately ushered me into some fast-paced room full of hospital and doctor crap. My heart was off rhythm beating irregularly from 70bpm to 188 bpm with absolutely no rhythm to it. I had never had heart problems in the past. They needed to stop my heart and reset it; I was told. They gave me the options of using the paddles or an injection of a chemical that does the same thing, supposedly. Well, I chose the injection and, apparently, I am one of a billion people who have the exact opposite effect that the chemical is supposed to produce. Instead of stopping my heart it shot my heart rate up to over 300bpm. Ya, that fast. It shot me out of the bed to sitting straight up.

They eventually put something in my IV to regulate my heartbeat and things get back to normal. Nobody has a clue what happened to this day. So, as they are finishing up and about to admit me for the evening, I asked the nurse for all the biohazard garbage from my incident. It’s a bag where they put all the trash like the pieces of paper from the sticky things, they put on you, the trash from the electrodes, the gauze from the places they drew blood, the medical tape, the pads that were stuck to me that they were going to shock me from, etc. She looked at me weirdly and asked me why. I explained that I will use them as stencils for a painting.

So, I spend three or four days in the hospital and everything for the most part works out. A month or so later I laid out this big blank canvas and scattered these pieces of trash from that experience on top of canvas. I hit each piece with some black spray paint and there it sat for another two months. For some reason I get the urge to sketch a crucified Jesus in the middle of the painting. I googled some random images of the crucifixion and began. The painting then developed around all the random stenciled shapes into what you see now. All in all, throughout the next three years I would work on it. I eventually finished it up in the early summer of 2023. You can still see a few of the stencils and the spray paint is easy to spot in person.

This painting is a great example of my own personal style of art. Made from the randomness and meaningless parts of life into something tangible, quasi-organized and beautiful. The backside of God the Fathers spirt can be seen rising over most of the entire painting. His hands are spread up reaching and proclaiming victory of death.