Digital painting showcases ‘broken immigration system’

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — A West Michigan artist aims to showcase the “broken immigration system” with a digital painting in ArtPrize 2024.

John Leben, who has a gallery in the Saugatuck area , has been creating digital paintings for years. To make them, he starts with pieces of photographs, putting them together and then importing the composition into a digital painting program called ArtRage. From there, Leben paints over the whole thing.

For ArtPrize 2024, his piece “The End Of Innocence” — printed on three separate canvas panels that are bolted together to create one painting that is 7 feet wide — will be displayed at Fountain Street Church.

“The piece does not have a lot of subtlety to it,” Leben said. “It’s about our broken immigration system and specifically about some of the previous administrations’ efforts to stem the tide of immigration.”

The digital painting depicts a young girl clutching barbed wire.

Behind her, the artist explained, are figures that he calls “bald-headed suiters.”

“I’ve been using (bald-headed suiters) for years,” Leben said. “In this case, they symbolize, you know, bureaucracy and politicians and border control agents, that sort of thing.”

He created the suiters a decade ago by dressing up his daughter’s dance company in caps and trench coats, with the goal of creating androgynous symbols, and photographing them.

In “The End Of Innocence,” the main bald-headed suiter holds a cage with a teddy bear inside, while several figures work to hold down a colorful hot air balloon.

“(The hot air balloon is) about upward mobility, striving for something,” Leben said. “And in this case, the bald-headed suiters are trying to hold it down, you know, they’re trying to suppress the upward mobility, the ambitions of the immigrants who are trying to find a better life.”

He explained that when it comes to ArtPrize, which features hundreds of entries, subtlety is not his goal.

“The amount of time that any one person is going to spend on each entry is very limited,” Leben said. “So I wanted to do a picture that would be very obvious and very quick to be able to absorb and understand the meaning.”

He hopes that when people see his piece, they’re moved.

“I want them to feel for the families who are trying to find a better life in the United States,” Leben said. “I believe in the immigration process. I think it’s good for our country to bring people in from other countries.”

The artist, who has been participating in ArtPrize for 14 years, says he “loves the democracy” of the competition.

“There’s so many artists and so much to see at ArtPrize all over town. It’s just so exciting and so vibrant. The city just comes alive with ArtPrize,” he said. “I’d like people to come and see my piece, of course, but come and see everything.”

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