A Prayer in Color
"A Prayer in Color is an immersive field of movement and emotion, a vast landscape where color becomes language and gesture becomes breath. Created at the invitation of ArtLifting, the work marked a return to a scale the artist had not explored in over a decade. Undertaking a piece of this size carried significant physical risk and challenge, as the artist lives with severe craniocervical instability—a condition in which the skull shifts and compresses the spinal cord—making sustained movement, reach, and exertion profoundly demanding. Completing this work was not only an artistic endeavor, but an act of determination and endurance. Because the piece exceeds the dimensions of the artist’s walls, it was created entirely flat, draped across a long table. This horizontal orientation was both a necessity and a transformation of process. Working on a flat plane altered the relationship to gravity and motion, turning painting into a slow, carefully modulated choreography rather than a vertical encounter. The artwork was rolled back and forth across the table throughout its creation, a rhythm that allowed sections to emerge gradually and embedded the physical memory of repetition, restraint, and perseverance into the surface itself. The process was collaborative. Caregivers participated directly in the making of the work, assisting with movement and exploring color, texture, and mark-making alongside the artist, often using unfamiliar tools. These shared gestures—rooted in trust, improvisation, and care—are held within the layered blues, violets, greens, and sudden bursts of warmth that shift like weather across the canvas. The surface carries both turbulence and tenderness, shaped by pause as much as motion. Rather than depicting a scene, A Prayer in Color invites the viewer into an experience. It functions as a wordless prayer—one made of pigment, rhythm, relationship, and light. The work holds the trace of its making: an offering shaped through limitation, collaboration, and devotion, and extended outward as a quiet affirmation of presence, resilience, and shared humanity."
- Elizabeth D'Angelo
Interested in this original? Email info@artlifting.com to:
- speak with an art specialist
- request condition photos and/or framing quotes
