Some paintings stay in the studio. Others find their way out into the world and keep moving. Over the past year, one of mine — Annuit Coeptis — has been quietly traveling, and I wanted to share where it’s been and what it means to me.
The title comes from the Great Seal of the United States. You’ve seen it without realizing it: Annuit Cœptis, printed on the reverse of the one-dollar bill, usually translated “God favors our undertakings.” It’s a line about promise — a nation’s belief in its own undertakings. In this painting, I wanted to hold that promise up to the light and ask a quieter question underneath it: who was that promise meant to include?
Annuit Coeptis has been traveling with “Everyday People,” a touring exhibition as part of the permanent collection of the NAACP celebrating Black art and culture. The exhibition has appeared in Miami during Art Basel week, in Detroit and Dayton, and this month in Chicago, during the opening weekend of the Obama Presidential Center — shown alongside a group of contemporary Black artists whose work I admire such as Floyd Strickland, Tim Okamura, Mario Moore, and Ronald Jackson, and many other great contemporary American Artists.
To see this painting in that company, in those cities, during moments that carry so much meaning for so many people, has been humbling.
If you’d like to spend more time with the work, just go to my Instagram profile @markbeckpaintings. Several paintings — including pieces from this body of work — are available as hand-signed, limited-edition prints here, a way to live with the work for those who’d like to. And this August, I’ll be showing new paintings at Lost in Composition in Seattle; I’ll share the details soon.
Thank you, as always, for following along.
— Mark
