Seated Listener: Palm

Reggie Burrows Hodges (American, born 1965) is a Maine-based, California-born painter. Burrows Hodges builds up his paintings from a black ground rather than a typical white canvas. Although he brings in bright colors for clothing and surroundings, the figure or figures are often uniformly dark-skinned. Burrows Hodges is well-versed in the history of portraiture and Seated Listener: Palm demonstrates his tendency to paint highly specific figures lacking in facial features. According to Hodges, “This idea of the seated figure, the seated listener, is really important to me.” The artist connects the dark skin tones of his figures with his use of black ground in his paintings, stating, “My use of this concept is to enroll the Black figure as a stand-in for humanity—that specific way of describing it is part of a thought presented by the scholar Fred Moten, but I pull it from the incredibly poetic way that Arthur Jafa speaks about the idea of the Black figure standing in for humanity.”

At a time when the public at large is reckoning with the long devaluing of Black life, Burrows Hodges’ use of an anonymous Black figure as a representative for humanity is both beautiful and radical.​