Afterlife

Senior Thesis Exhibition

Moravian University’s Payne Gallery April 21, 2022 - May 7, 2022

Afterlife, currently on view in Payne Gallery, is a monumental triptych inspired by ornate Catholic altarpieces and Renaissance scenes. These large-scale paintings create expansive environments, inspired by stained glass windows that transport viewers into scenes of heaven, hell, and earth. The massive tryptic suggests the importance and relevance of such an expansive dialogue around life and death potentially diminishing the ego, and one’s significance in the grand scheme of things. 

One-point perspective is used throughout the tryptic, each vanishing point representing the morals associated with the scene. This type of perspective was commonly used in Renaissance artwork to portray depth and vast spaces, and was commonly driven by Catholic narratives such as DaVinci’s The Last Supper. The vanishing points also serve as illustrative rays that dominate each scene, culminating in a point where the lines seem to vibrate outward. 

Heaven and Hell parallel one another divided by an Earthly plane, suggesting similarities amongst these realms and reinforcing the theme of Trinity. As a whole, the Afterlife tryptic references traditional altarpieces and ornate historical artwork, perpetuating the enduring question of what comes after life.