Temptation, 2009 Oil on Canvas by Stacy Stewart Smith
Temptation, 2009 Oil on Canvas by Stacy Stewart Smith
Description
Temptation is the painting that does not look away.
The final work of the Resurrection series, this monumental oil on canvas — 54" × 80" — closes the cycle not with transcendence but with confrontation. Where earlier works in the series reached toward the divine, Temptation turns the gaze inward, toward the most human of failures: the capacity to hate, and the silence that allows it to grow.
At the left of the composition, a colossal ear rendered in daubs of Cadmium red and Rose Madder dominates the canvas. It is not a portrait. It is an address. It is you — the viewer — being asked to listen, and in listening, to reckon. Across the canvas, a darkened town sits beneath a cooling sunset, rendered in deep Prussian blues, its stillness the stillness of willful blindness. And suspended above it, almost imperceptible in its smallness: a tiny noose. The disproportion is the point. Hatred begins small. It is always small, until it is not.
Smith’s Abstractrealism here operates at its most prophetic. The painting was completed in 2009, but its vision of American racial hatred — its capacity to smolder quietly, to be fed by power, to become colossal — reads as a work that knew what was coming. It is a painting about end times, yes, but more precisely about the moment before them: the private moment when we are alone with the conception of our own sin.
For those whom this painting will offend, it is a call to ask oneself why.
Oil on Canvas · 54" × 80" · 2009
One-of-a-kind original. Shipping insurance is strongly recommended; please add it to your acquisition.
Care
Stacy Stewart Smith offers made-to-order garments, fine art, and digital publications — each requiring different care. Please refer to the product description for care and handling instructions specific to your purchase. For garments: dry clean or spot clean unless otherwise noted; do not machine wash. For fine art: keep away from direct sunlight and humidity; handle with clean, dry hands or cotton gloves. For digital products and publications: no physical care required; download and archive your files upon receipt.
Design
Every Stacy Stewart Smith piece begins as a drawing and ends as a decision — a deliberate choice of textile, construction method, and proportion made by a single designer with five decades of practice. The same eye that composes a painting composes a coat: line, weight, negative space, and the relationship between form and the body that inhabits it. Garments are produced in New York City, one at a time, to the measurements and preferences of the individual client. No two pieces are identical. No production run exists. This is not manufacturing — it is making.
The atelier sources textiles for their hand, weight, and longevity. Sustainability here is not a campaign. It is the natural consequence of making only what is wanted, from materials chosen to last, by a craftsman who will not put his name on anything less.