John Wells created four Scrolls, two in 1977 and two in 1987. Each is 60 feet long, of gouache on architectural grid paper. Since 2019, Wells has been developing a fifth scroll.

The Scrolls are stream of consciousness images and symbols, numbers, letters, phrases, abstraction and accidents, delineating subjects from the personal to the social, historical, literary and liturgical. Crosses and ankhs mingle with imps, trees, triangles, penises. The twelve permutations of the name of God, the tetragrammaton, are scrambled amidst untamed passages of paint strokes going in every direction. English, Latin, German, French, Arabic, Chinese are all found here. There is a Tibetan mantra for getting warm when freezing cold -- “ahahahahahahahahahahaha” -- as experienced and related by a traveling English noblewoman in the 19th Century. Fragments of requiem masses, names of friends who have passed, lines from the Orphic mysteries emerge and submerge. Words from Schutz’s "Missa Exequiem," written for the Elector of Saxony and inscribed inside his coffin, are woven in: “Naked from my mother’s womb have I come and naked shall I return thither.” Erudite in these areas, Wells points out that this is not a canonical Roman mass but a Protestant one which does not follow precedent. “Gracious Jesus enlighten my eyes that I may not fall asleep in death, that my enemies may never say they have prevailed against me” is a Psalm, set to music in a motet he happened to be listening to while painting. Wells’ favorite line is from a Byzantine carving of the Agnus Dei: “Mors ego sum mortis vocor agnus sum leo fortis”, or “I am the death of death, I am called a lamb, I am a strong lion.”

The Scrolls have been installed five times: at the Palais Royal in Paris; Barbara Braathen Gallery, New York City; Honey Space, New York City; the Moscow Art Fair of 2011; and for the Gladdening Light Symposium in Winter Park, Florida in February 2013.

Leelas.art

Leelas.art