Medium: Acrylic on Canvas
Size: 5ft x 4ft
Creation Date: 2024
Collection: Black and White

“Black Church' lets the unknown speak softly, inviting us into a landscape of shifting truths.”

Black Church (2025) is a study in presence — a quiet, monumental form rendered through darkness and restraint. This 60 x 48 inch mixed media painting, part of the Greyscale Series, is minimal in color but rich in atmosphere. Inspired by the silhouette of sacred structures, the work reimagines spiritual space through form, surface, and the poetics of shadow.

The central mass rises like a spire — slightly off-center, slightly faded — constructed from layers of matte black, graphite gray, and charcoal. The surface is textured with scraped lines and subtle abrasions that give the structure age, wear, and mystery. A faint outline of a doorway, nearly invisible, hints at entrance — or the impossibility of one.

I created Black Church while reflecting on quietude and reverence — not as religious iconography, but as emotional space. It is not about any one faith. It is about what it means to build something inward: to create a chamber for feeling, for reflection, for stillness.

The work shares visual restraint with Ad Reinhardt’s “Black Paintings,” but where Reinhardt erases, I leave traces. My blacks are not flat — they breathe, they crackle, they hum.

This painting invites you to slow down. To approach, not solve. Black Church isn’t a monument to belief. It’s a monument to the act of seeking.

Ritu Raj | Contemporary Abstract Artist | Phoenix

After 30 years as an executive and entrepreneur, I returned to painting full-time to explore what words and strategy couldn’t hold. I create bold, expressive abstract art to shift how we see and feel—opening space for reflection, connection, and quiet transformation. For me, change begins not with certainty, but with listening.

https://www.rituart.com/
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Threshold of the Black Door

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Abstract Window into Nothing