Refugees: La Sagrada Familia, by Kelly Latimore

“I feel the need for new images (new icons),” writes Kelly Latimore, a self-taught St. Louis artist who began painting as a member of the Common Friars, a monastic order in the Episcopal Church. He has taken up the brush to explore issues of faith and justice, placing himself “in the patterns of the old images and yet making new images.” In Refugees: La Sagrada Familia, he draws on his experience of meeting a young immigrant who spoke of his travels through the desert and across the border to arrive in the United States. “We can see the journey of any refugee as not simply a political issue, or an issue at all,” he writes about the work. “We are talking about people, with names, faces, and stories. They have something to teach us about what we know, about who God is, the world we live in and who are our neighbors. This is the real work of being human and of art. Being more present. Go be present.”