Interrogating “Choir of the False Ascension”

1/18/2026: Lately, I’ve found myself staring at finished paintings with disgust. Not because they’re bad, but because they feel tame.

Interrogating the Work

I’ve been interrogating my works lately. I’ve gotten to the point where typical studio outcomes don’t impress me. I have this burning urge to push every piece I’m working on to it’s wildest possibility.

The Revelation

One such piece is the Choir for the False Ascension. I was speaking with Johanna (studio assistant, girlfriend, muse and fellow interrogater) about this piece the other night, and she made a stunning realization. The piece seems to create an endless cyclic effect when viewed in the correct way.

Choir for the False Ascension, in progress.

Johanna’s Insight

In the upper left, a pair of legs stretch skyward, an eerie escape from the chaos below. In the lower right, a second figure kneels, cloaked in disbelief, half-formed and cropped at the thigh.

The Loop Unfolds

She mentioned that the kneeling character’s bottom half is cropped, but his legs (with a stretch of imagination) could be viewed as the ascending legs in the adjacent corner.

What I Took From It

While this was not my intention, I reveled in the idea. Part of what gives these images fuel is their expansiveness, and the implications of what goes on around them in spaces unseen.

Lesson learned: show the work, talk about it, exhaust ideas.

What unseen loops live in your own creations? What might your work be trying to tell you—if you dared to interrogate it back?

-GODBG