Pixel Dr. King

Coloured pencil and ink pen on paper

35 × 50 cm / 13.8 × 19.7 in, 2020

Available — €550

The reference image is the well-known photograph of Martin Luther King taken during the Selma to Montgomery march in 1965.

In this case, I was interested not only in portraying a famous face, but in starting from an image already rooted in a precise historical context. Martin Luther King remains central, but recognition also depends on the surrounding scene: the group, the march and its atmosphere.

The reduction into pixels pushes the image almost to the edge of legibility, but for that very reason it highlights how much the memory of that scene helps complete it. We are not only looking at a face, but reconstructing a scene we already know, even when its details are no longer fully visible.