For Jacques

For Jacques (In)
Charcoal and acrylic drawing on arches 300gsm rag, 2024.

For Jacques (The Panther of God)
Charcoal and acrylic drawing on arches 300gsm rag, 2024.

For Jacques is a large scale charcoal drawing series on paper, inspired by the prison letters of Jacques Fesch, later beatified by the Catholic Church. Fesch wrote these letters during four years of solitary confinement on death row, following his conviction for murder. While imprisoned, he underwent a profound spiritual conversion.

His beatification does not deny the gravity of his crime. Rather, it recognises the depth of his repentance, his embrace of faith, and the radical transformation of his inner life before his execution. Redemption here is not about erasure or innocence, but about change.

The drawings are cut out in the shape of arches and installed physically above existing doorways. As the viewer passes beneath them, a simple domestic threshold is transformed, suggesting movement from the secular toward the sacred.