Charcoal on paper, approximately 84" x 32". Emmanuel was a gentle homeless man and a visionary artist who created astonishing intricately detailed architectural drawings of a world that operates somewhere outside the limitations of the usual three dimensions. We met at an exhibition of a Franciscan Center art class in which he participated; I was struck by his beauty and overcame some reticence to ask him to pose for me. We worked together for maybe six months, in my studio or the treatment center where he was sometimes confined, but he became more and more elusive; later I saw him only occasionally, when he would turn up at my door for an “advance” on his modeling fee. Eventually he disappeared altogether; perhaps, I imagined, into that other-dimensional world he had depicted.
