ARTIST STATEMENT
The work I create is concerned with the theological and philosophical dimensions of two-dimensional space. My practice functions as a mode of theological inquiry, wherein the opportunity to contemplate the triune God in a distinct light presents itself. It is in this way that the work does not simply paraphrase what my faith already believes, but insists on the role visuality itself lends to particular ways of knowing, thinking, and experiencing Christianity. Through the marriage of representation and abstraction, figure and ground, I aim to introduce more beautiful questions for the spiritual life. I metabolize this faith through the contemplative dance of making, buttressed by an academic substructure not only in theology, but cognitive and philosophical psychology and world religion. This fusion is what theological inquiry means in the context of my practice.
The work takes on a trinitarian shape, and through the use of water, light, abstraction, drawing and chance, the ministry to the imagination begins. By symbolizing God, the hypostasis – (the ground of reality itself) as the non-representational, colorful, and obtuse shapes of my practice, I make my first theological claim about God the Father. The figures within the picture, by virtue of the figure-ground principle of gestalt psychology, are then inextricably linked to this ground. I understand this within the framework of my practice as an analogy for the inseparable union of the ground and it’s outpouring into materiality (God the Son). Through the Spirit, we are invited into this dyad through the act of beholding, a prayer of perception and attention (God the Holy Spirit).

ARTIST BIO
Jaden DeJesus Blango is a mixed-media theological artist based in Durham, North Carolina. Born and raised in New York, a move to rural South Texas as a teenager exposed him to new questions about, distance, composition, and physical space. Jaden began exhibiting his blooming creative work in South Texas, where he developed his technical sense and manner, inspired by the draftsmanship of Jacopo Pontormo, Adolph Menzel, Edgar Degas, and others. Along the way, Jaden turned his attention toward the potential of two-dimensional space, specifically as a symbolic context for exploring the act of drawing as a spiritual activity.

D. Blango holds a Bachelor’s in Fine Arts from the University of Texas at San Antonio, and a Master’s degree in Theological Studies from Duke Divinity School, where he held a dual fellowship as a Latinx Fellow and C. Eric Lincoln Fellow in Theology and the Arts. D. Blango utilizes his hybrid education and material practice with water, mark making, abstraction, and chance to weave intellectual faith and material creativity. In doing so, creating opportunities for wonder and spaces to question and reimagine theological assumptions. By this, he hopes more beautiful and nuanced questions about religion may flourish.