Immigrant Christian Abstract Expressionists for Trump

“Is God choosing Donald Trump?”

This is not a question that many American voters, even those who are supporting the current Republican frontrunner, are asking themselves. But it is one that Julian Raven, a self-described “evangelist by vocation and artist by trade” who is currently driving through Iowa in a pick-up truck with a vinyl reproduction of his massive painting of Trump in tow, is inclined to answer in the affirmative.

Raven’s background is not in politics and, until recently, he was not painting either. For years Raven, who was born in London and became an American citizen last fall, made cabinets and other high-end furniture in New York. “I used to think I would have to die first before I made it,” he says.

He worked mainly in an abstract expressionist vein under the influence of Jackson Pollock. That changed last year after he saw a photograph of Alan Henning, the British cab driver beheaded by ISIS, and painted his portrait. “He was slaughtered like an animal,” Raven says. “I was moved to tears by that level of inhumanity.” This was the beginning of a turn toward representation in his work that culminated in “Unafraid and Unashamed,” the 7’ by 15’ acrylic nightscape of Donald Trump standing beside an eagle and the planet Earth that Raven completed last summer over a period of two months.

For Raven, this was a religious experience. “On July 9,” he says, “I was looking carefully at a photograph of Mr. Trump’s face and listening to his words when I had this moment of inspiration: the words ‘unashamed and unafraid.’ As I was thinking about him I had this picture in my head immediately of an eagle swooping down and catching a falling U.S. flag.”

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