Sanctum (Star of Bethelheim) is an original work in gold leaf on paper, 12 × 16 × 1 inches.
The larger figure curves over the smaller form below with a weight that reads less as protection than as gravity , two bodies held in orbit around each other, the cross-haloed crown marking one as sacred while dripped and scattered gold marks extending outward suggest radiance as something that cannot be contained within an outline.
Byzantine icon tradition placed gold behind its figures, a ground of divine light. Here the gold is the figure itself, built up and dripped and pressed into a black field that absorbs everything that does not insist on being seen. The sacred is not background. It is substance , which means the tenderness between these two forms and the material that composes them are the same thing.
One-of-a-kind original. Gold leaf on paper. 12 × 16 × 1 inches.
