Study for Temptation, 2006 on NYC Metrocard by Stacy Stewart Smith

Before Temptation could confront the world at 54" × 80", it had to be worked out in the quiet of a Brooklyn studio — on a surface no larger than a transit card.

This graphite and gesso study on a New York City MTA MetroCard — 2.125" × 3.375" — is the earliest resolved thinking toward what would become the final and most prophetic painting of the Resurrection series. In the spare, colorless language of graphite and gesso, Smith mapped the composition’s essential tensions: the colossal and the minute, the seen and the deliberately ignored.

The work traces its origins to June 20, 2005 — the day Smith traveled to Paris specifically to photograph the Eiffel Tower for his next series. The city was not easy. The language barrier was real, the logistics formidable, the intimidation genuine. And yet he went, camera in hand, and brought back the images that would fuel years of studio work. This small study is among the first evidence of what those photographs became in the hands of an artist who understood that a picture of a tower was never really about a tower.

Exhibited at the Stacy Stewart Smith Gallery circa 2009 and featured on the Eric Adams Show that same year, this MetroCard study is a rare document of a major work in its earliest form — the moment before the prophecy was fully spoken.

Graphite and Gesso on NYC MTA MetroCard · 2.125" × 3.375" · 2006
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