‘Soul Painting “Raise It Up”’ (2024) is the first painting to debut from Rashid Johnson’s new and highly anticipated Soul Painting series. Recognized as one of the major voices of his generation, Johnson’s new works build on his celebrated Anxious Men, poignant Seascapes and deeply personal God Paintings. Continuing to expand his distinctive and celebrated visual lexicon with expressive and physical explorations of the self through mark-making, ‘Soul Painting “Raise It Up”’ exemplifies the artist’s longstanding interest in interiority and new investigations into animism, the belief where all things, including inanimate objects, have souls.

Through animism, the artist connects to a reality beyond the physical, building a spiritually expansive vision of the universe. The resulting compositions are best described as ‘Soulscapes’, which contain the evocative almond-shaped vesica piscis, also employed in Johnson’s Seascapes and God Paintings. When halved, this ancient symbol appears as both a vessel and an opening eye, signifying a liminal space and portal for the opening mind. Johnson’s new Soul Paintings build on these two important bodies of work, harnessing this evocative motif to capture and examine his spiritual journey. The neutral palette also echoes Johnson’s Surrender Paintings, in which he applies Titanium White paint directly onto raw linen canvas. The ghostly white faces trace the development of his Anxious Men series, where color has cooled from hot reds (Anxious Men Paintings) to melancholic blues (Bruise Paintings), finally to white. Revisiting this surrender of color in ‘Soul Paintings “Raise It Up,”’ Johnson is instead energized by a new awareness that inspires his mark-making. The central cranial form poignantly echoes Johnson’s Anxious Men. From its head shoots another, as if illustrating Johnson’s third eye and intention to investigate perception beyond ordinary sight.