Pentimento

From an Italian word meaning “to repent,” a pentimento is an instance in painting when traces of an artist’s earlier decisions or mistakes are visible through the final layer(s) of paint. Using modes of confession, ekphrasis, and biblical persona, Pentimento excavates a queerness entangled in one’s faith tradition. Whether seeking to understand his relationship to god, friends, or family, Garcia interrogates questions that arise on the path to self-acceptance. In “Self-Portrait as a Virgin,” a biblical persona asks, “How else are we to take words whole / in our mouths, except as they are given?” Concerned with naming, desire, love, and belonging, Pentimento is a response to a kind of annunciation, the almost supernatural calling of the artist to find words through which the self is free to move.