KEPT is an ongoing painting practice built from an archive of opted-in handwritten prayers and requests gathered through cross installations across varied public contexts. With explicit consent, each permitted tag is preserved as source material; a curated selection is translated into monumental works—acrylic on raw linen (6+ feet tall)—reproduced exactly as written.

Handwriting is evidence: a trace of a specific person in a specific moment, leaving language behind as proof of need. Pressure, spacing, omissions, misspellings—nothing is corrected. The work does not edit what was offered.

What changes is not the text, but the conditions of encounter. Enlarged and held on raw linen, a private address—offered in public—becomes legible as document and presence. In front of the work, reading becomes participation. The viewer is invited into a role—witness, carrier, proxy—holding a stranger’s petition for a moment as if it were their own.

Each painting retains its original handwritten tag as an integral element: source artifact and provenance. KEPT functions as reliquary, record, and assignment. It refuses disappearance and asks what it means to keep what someone has left behind.