Palimpsestic Metanoia 12: John’s Door

Diane Holland

42 x 32.8″

Kodak Endura Metallic Print

“Palimpsestic Metanoia 12: John’s Door” is a kaleidoscopic fusion of history, identity, and shifting perception, where fragments of text, figures, and cultural artifacts converge in an orchestrated symphony of layered meaning. The composition unfolds like a living palimpsest, revealing overlapping narratives of memory, transformation, and the passage of time.

The artist weaves together religious iconography, historic texts, and contemporary figures, dissolving the boundaries between the sacred and the everyday. A fragmented vintage television screen evokes the distortion of media and memory, suggesting how technology reshapes our understanding of history and truth. The interplay of figures in motion—some captured in painterly abstraction, others in sharp photographic detail—creates a sense of perpetual flux, as if the composition itself exists in a state of constant becoming.

The use of stained-glass hues, neon bursts of color, and shadowed silhouettes infuses the work with an aesthetic reminiscent of collage and illuminated manuscripts, reinforcing themes of multiplicity—of identities, cultures, and timelines collapsing into one visual plane. The contrasting textures—some geometric and rigid, others fluid and gestural—suggest an ongoing act of reconstruction, mirroring how memory and identity are continuously rewritten.