202214 (In Prayer) by Bryan S. Halls (Original Painting)

In Prayer
For twenty years I had created in the same style. That of canvas painted black and the image painted in thin white lines, and mainly creating a story of Christian subject matter. Two years ago, I started to do something different out of the boredom of doing the same thing over and over again. That was to change it up a little bit with a black painted background but instead of the thin white lines creating the subject matter fields of white would now be painted to create the image.
Part of the boredom was that I had been creating images inspired by stories from the bible and I just couldn’t get into them the same way I had in the past. With this I thought of what I wanted paint and I thought that I would venture into creating images of people in communication with God, that being in different forms of prayer. Not always is a person in prayer on there knees with folded hands to their head, instead I started creating images of peoples faces in different forms of distress, confusion, and bliss. These faces would all come together to create this body of work. Other than that, there is no real message behind each individual painting. In fact, each painting is untitled with only a serial number to determine their differences, so that the viewer can take from it what they want. To have the image make them feel a certain way only through a visual stimulation instead of having a title lead them to an end message.
This body of work is new to me and I feel is a refreshing change to my creative out put and am excited to bring them out of my studio and show them to the public. I think they are part of an evolution of my work that is helping me grow as an artist and am excited to see were this will take me in the future.