Babel by James Edward Scherbarth

A dark figure with no face, and all around him, writing no one can read.

Babel is a 2015 painting by James Edward Scherbarth, in oil and cold wax medium on cradle board. The title recalls the story in Genesis, in which a single tower ends in a confusion of tongues, a tale long told to explain why people speak different languages. Scherbarth's form could be a head and shoulders, or the tower itself, rising dark brown against grey light. Pink shows through the head. White scribbles loop across the right side and over the shoulder like script, with neat ticks along the far left edge. Thirty inches wide and 24 high.

Everyone is talking. That was always the trouble.