On June 7, 2020, Baltimore-based artist Jeffrey Kent, along with friends and family, installed his latest work on the front of the Peale building: two large Black Lives Matter banners. Jeffrey’s artwork is conceptual, informed by the historical and the personal, inextricably linked. His passionate investigation of issues related to the political and economic foundations of freedom and the role of responsible citizenship is the thread connecting all of Kent’s collections. We now find this same thread connecting different communities and peoples in this nation, all with the same call, simply: Black. Lives. Matter.
Artist’s Statement
> Listen to Jeffrey talk about his work in an interview by Noreen Smith
These paintings are originally painted to simply express the message, “Black Lives Matters.” After beginning the paintings, it became much more. Initially important was that I used materials that would withstand external exposure. Exterior paint in tar black applied to a painter’s drop cloth heavily enough to drench the fabric so that the black bled through to the back of the fabric provides the foundation of the artworks. The metaphor of a black foundation, as the United States was founded on the backs of enslaved and freed black labor and intellect, continues through to the starkly white letters almost floated on top of the black canvas, applied from the tube. The white letters float above and are supported by the black foundation: a reminder that anti-racism work impacts us all, and whose souls are at stake.
–Jeffrey Kent