Coin of Maurice Tiberius c. 584 - 585

This coin was struck in the name of Maurice Tiberius, but like, who *was* he, really? What I see when I look at the coin is more about the process of *being* a coin than the guy, himself. The images are worn, rubbed, distressed—almost completely gone. As a painter, I feel that. It's the same way I feel about a canvas I’ve worked on for a long time, layers and layers of marks obscuring earlier ideas, previous compositions all fighting to be seen. Look at the texture, the way it's all smoothed and softened from being handled. There’s a kind of beauty in the coin's faded surface, in how the images seem to emerge from a dark, chaotic ground. It reminds me of some of Cy Twombly’s paintings—these layered, scrawled surfaces that feel both ancient and totally new. Art is just one conversation that we are all contributing to, across time. Coins, paintings; it's all the same.