Work i(s/n) Progress
2019-Present
Work i(s/n) Progress centers on construction workers—figures whose labor underpins the built environment yet often remains invisible. The paintings situate these workers within the broader history of labor across the Americas. In these compositions, the tools of modern industry appear alongside archaic weapons such as pikes, halberds, and long axes, collapsing historical timelines and linking contemporary workers to longer struggles over labor, power, and collective identity. Through these symbolic juxtapositions, the series places present-day labor within a continuum of social conflict and nation-building, framing the worker as both a historical agent and a central figure in the ongoing construction of national myth.
Una historia gringa, 2020
oil on canvas
60 x 44 in (152 x 112 cm)
Una Historia Gringa depicts construction workers confronting a figure cloaked in Klan robes within a New York subway station, exposing the persistence of racial violence embedded in American life. Drawing from four immigration stories in the artist’s family history, the work links labor, migration, and resistance. Two flags wave in tension—one marking inherited pasts, the other an uncertain future—while medieval weapons signal that the struggle for dignity, safety, and self-definition is both ancient and ongoing.
Reconstructing an American Conscious, 2020
oil on canvas
60 x 44 in (152 x 112 cm)
Reconstructing an American Conscious reflects a nation paused after war, confronting freedoms left unsecured. In the wake of Reconstruction, the promise of economic dignity, equal protection, and collective safety briefly emerged, then receded. The painting frames Reconstruction as an unfinished constitutional project—where access to rights was unevenly distributed, and national identity was shaped as much by withheld freedoms as by those formally guaranteed.
Three Barricades, 2020
oil on canvas
60 x 44 in (152 x 112 cm)
Washington’s Crew Crossing Delaware River St., 2024
oil on canvas
44 x 56 in (112 x 142 cm)
This work reinterprets Emanuel Leutze’s Washington Crossing… much as Robert Colescott’s George Washington Carver Crossing the Delaware (1975) did. Where Colescott’s work provided “commentary on the prevailing racist stereotypes in the United States today”, our work wonders where the country would be without the waves of foreign-born buttressing its workforce.
No Fuss No Muss, 2023
oil on canvas
44 x 29 in (112 x 74 cm)
No Fuss No Muss is based on the biblical narrative of Abraham’s sacrifice of his son. The painting ties in the political roe over Hunter Biden and the criminal case that was going on around him. I thought to myself, “I wonder what President Biden is thinking right now.” What will he do? Will he try to intervene, to the detriment of his political future, or will he let it play out?
MBY DCK, 2025
oil on canvas
67 x 116 in (170 x 295 cm)
MBY DCK is an interpretation of Herman Melville’s American classic, Moby-Dick and it’s themes of fate and self determination.