Study for Faith, 2006 Oil on NYC Metrocard by Stacy Stewart Smith

Before Faith could exist at 50" × 34", it had to exist at 2.125" × 3.375".

This oil study — painted on a New York City MTA MetroCard — is where the Resurrection series began to take shape. In the spring of 2006, working in his Atlantic Avenue Brooklyn studio, Smith used the humble surface of a transit card to work through the composition that would become Faith, the first completed painting of the series. Everything that would later unfold across a large canvas was first held in the palm of a hand.

The image traces back to a rain-soaked afternoon in Paris, 2005. The Eiffel Tower had closed due to flooding — streets near the landmark submerged, cars drifting — and Smith waited, then returned on instinct. His hunch was rewarded: the tower reopened, and he was among the first in line. From the moving elevator, he photographed the structure through rain-streaked glass, the iron lattice blurring and burning in the distant sun. That quality of movement, of beauty glimpsed through obstruction, became the visual language of the entire Resurrection series.

This study is the first mark of that vision — intimate, immediate, irreplaceable.

Exhibited at the Stacy Stewart Smith Gallery circa 2009 and featured on the Eric Adams Show that same year, it is a rare artifact: the seed of a body of work, small enough to hold, large enough to contain a calling.

Oil on NYC MTA MetroCard · 2.125" × 3.375" · 2006
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