Work

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints taught me how to not know things. I was instructed to pray, fast, and obey my way toward a conclusion that had already been decided for me, rather than examine the historical record that was always, quietly, available. This is not ignorance. This is engineering. I call it sanctioned blindness.

Sanctioned Blindness is a series of four acrylic collage portraits of Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism, rendered from reference material derived from the daguerreotype discovered in 2022 within a Smith family locket, identified by the historians who examined it as the only known photographic image of Joseph Smith. When I first encountered that image, I felt something shift. For the first time I was looking at the actual man, not the sanitized icon of my childhood. It inspired me to work from more honest reference material. This series is the result.

Each painting confronts a specific historical subject the record contains: the Urim and Thummim, the seer stones, the treasure seeking, the Masonic connections. The collage papers that construct these images are hand-made fragments assembled into a coherent surface, just as recovered history assembles itself from scattered fragments.

I am a sixth and seventh generation Mormon, born under the covenant into a family whose faith reached back to Joseph Smith’s earliest followers. I was raised to wear that identity with pride, and I do still, in my own way. It is precisely that depth of inheritance that qualifies me to paint this series.

In my experience, the testimony culture of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints encourages members to treat contrary evidence as spiritual attack rather than information. The fiercer the certainty, the more fragile the foundation it protects. This is not criticism of the people inside that system. It is my honest observation of the system itself.

These paintings are made for anyone willing to look, even briefly, even uncomfortably, even at the cost of what they thought they knew.

Behold what the record always contained.