The paintings of the man immediately draw the attention of anyone venturing into the gallery at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London.

The figure is set on a dark canvas, but there are swaths of vivid red — not blood-colored but still suggesting some damage — as well as vibrant purple and blue that add emphasis to the contours of his face. In one, he seems to be bellowing in anguish, or perhaps being pummeled. In another, with his head down on the sidewalk, it’s as if all life has gone out of him.

These are some of the portraits of George Floyd that artist Marvin Espy created in the aftermath of Floyd’s killing on May 25, 2020 at the hands of a police officer. They are part of an exhibition of the New London artist’s work titled “Up from the Asphalt” on view now at the Lyman Allyn.

The Floyd pieces are surrounded by other works. Several are abstract — a lot of gray swirling with other muted tones. Look closely enough, and you see, scratched into the paint, phrases like “I can’t breathe” and “Stop killing us!”

But there are optimistic portraits in the show as well — images of young people of color, with relaxed, confident expressions.

“Espy’s paintings and words offer us a pathway to unite in mourning, stand in resolve, and share in our hopes,” the exhibition text states.

Espy spoke recently about the Floyd paintings and the other artwork in the exhibition.

Imagining the firsts

“I was like the rest of the world around the time of George Floyd’s murder, in that we were all on the front of end of what we learned to be COVID-19 and isolation and insecurity about what we could touch and not touch or being around people — it was a very bizarre time,” Espy said.

In mid-2020, people were watching video of George Floyd — “the depiction of a man being murdered in front the world, basically live,” Espy said. “So I think I had a reaction like most people, I hope, that I was shocked and appalled and frustrated and any number of emotions.”

A week or so after, he was still struggling with the world and with humanity, and he said he was a miserable person to be around.

Espy, who was living in North Carolina then, was not with his normal circle of friends there, since the art studio he was part of closed because of COVID. When the studio did reopen, Espy’s wife, Tracy, encouraged him to go and paint.

“I resisted (painting Floyd) because I had already done paintings in the past with Trayvon Martin and some other Black men and women who had been likewise murdered,” Espy said. “So I felt resistance to wanting to do it again. But at her urging, I did go back to the studio, and the first day back, I didn’t do any work.”

Instead, he watched coverage about Floyd on his cell phone. He found a 20-minute video and a nine-minute video of the end of Floyd’s life. He watched them — probably ill-advisedly, he said — for a couple of days. He doesn’t know why he did that, except that he felt compelled to.

At a certain point, he said, he imagined Floyd’s family not being able to get away from the coverage.

“I wondered to myself: What would it be like to not be able to escape those thoughts and images? I think that fueled me watching it more and more,” Espy said.

He then got out six large wood panels and began painting. He had no exhibition in mind; he was just putting paint on the canvas and seeing where it took him.

Espy ultimately captured still images from the videos and used those as the spark for what he created on the canvases. Four of the five Floyd paintings that are on view at the Lyman Allyn are from Floyd’s struggle — one when he was being handcuffed and the three others when he was face down until he died. Another was of an often-used photo of Floyd in life, relaxed and gazing into the camera, a baseball cap on his head.

“Again, I didn’t have any intent for those images. I needed to spill it all out,” Espy said.

He had heard coverage about Floyd that depicted him simply as someone who used drugs or had been incarcerated — “someone less like the rest of us,” he recalled.

Then music came into the mix. Espy began listening to the iconic Roberta Flack recording of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.”

“I imagined (Floyd) having some of the firsts in life that we all celebrate. Someone celebrating his first birthday, perhaps, and his first ballgame, his first time being on a basketball team, a first love, a first kiss, those things. I played that song back-to-back for nearly a week while I painted those images,” Espy said.

He also realized this: The first time he ever saw George Floyd’s face, it was during the worst moment of Floyd’s life.

“That’s not what any of us want,” Espy said.

Espy’s paintings of Floyd don’t look like any other work in his catalog.

“I think all those things informed the outcome,” he said.

In retrospect, he thinks the style of these paintings was influenced by the work of Jenny Saville, whose art Espy spent time studying around that time. Some of her best known artworks are paintings of burn victims, although a viewer wouldn’t know that from the finished product. Instead, the pieces look like abstract distortions of the human figure, some using very vivid colors.

Espy’s Floyd pieces were also done more spontaneously, without all the planning he does for, say, the watercolors on view at his gallery at 308 State St. in New London.

Holding our stories

The aforementioned abstracts, meanwhile, are Espy’s personification of the ground under Floyd, reflecting what the ground would say if it were a person. He sees the abstracts as voices from the pavement, or the ancestry or the spirit that lives in the ground.

“I wanted to convey the idea that the pavement holds all of our stories, good or bad,” Espy said.

Rediscovering the paintings

Before those pieces were entirely complete, the studio where Espy worked closed its doors yet again. Around the same time, Tracy Espy accepted the position of president at Mitchell College in New London. They began packing up to move, and everything that was in his art studio had to go into storage. They stayed there for three years.

Last summer, Espy made a trip to Charlotte, and he cleared out his storage unit there and brought the Floyd pieces back to Connecticut.

After his “context NL” exhibition opened at Hygienic Art in New London last September, Espy met Lyman Allyn Director Sam Quigley and Curator Tanya Pohrt, who said they wanted to work with him in the near future.

“That was the first time I thought maybe that would be the first showing of the Floyd pieces,” Espy said.

Espy actually didn’t open the boxes with the Floyd paintings until January or February of this year. He took them out of the box and then peeled back the silicone wrap. He said that when he opened them up, “it felt like the trauma was waiting in the box for me. I wasn’t prepared for how impactful that would be emotionally.”

He added, “I think there are some pains that are worth remembering and worth revisiting, not unlike going to the Arlington Cemetery or to the gravesite of a loved one or discovering an ancient cemetery where your distant relatives were buried. While it’s painful to see, it’s worth revisiting because I think it’s so grounding. So the exhibition has been that way for me. I’m still emotional when I’m in that space by myself at the museum. But it’s a pain that I think is worthwhile.”

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

Espy used Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as a framework for processing Floyd’s last minutes. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs focuses on human motivation and posits that those needs follow a pyramid structure, from what is required for survival (like food and safety) all the way up to self-actualization. As the exhibition text states, “In his last breaths, George Floyd pleaded for the most essential needs of Maslow’s hierarchy. This exhibition explores what is core to all people, everywhere.”

Espy said, “The exhibition was meant to be a look at the work I did with George Floyd and the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, but showing that hierarchy of needs over what is now the last 3-1/2 years of my journey and landing in a place of hope. I think somewhere in one of the writings (the exhibition includes some of Espy’s writings as well as paintings) that I mention if we grieve together over the things that make us grieve, then our celebration is richer when we celebrate together.”

Looking toward the future

Espy said that his “context NL” exhibition in 2023 set him on a path of painting Black and brown people in a different context than they are often portrayed.

“I had completed that exhibition but I was still working in that vein, and I do believe in hindsight that was my exit from where I was mentally with George Floyd. From some of the works that I did in 2023, (I) landed on some pieces that felt so much joy and pride that I wanted to include them as a part (of the exhibition). I didn’t want the exhibition to stay stuck on George Floyd as I wanted myself and our audience to remember George Floyd but also look toward the future,” he said.

He added pieces — including images of young people — that serve that purpose.

As for what he hopes people leave the exhibition thinking about, Espy mentioned a recent conversation about racial justice he had in a room where several cultures were represented. Someone whom he believes to have compassion and a good heart said they wanted to love everyone the same and didn’t feel hatred toward anyone.

“I commented that for a believer — because this was a Bible-based event — for a believer in the Bible or Christianity, I don’t believe it is enough that I don’t hate,” Espy said. “I think I have to be an active participant in seeking justice for other people. Otherwise, I can watch an injustice and be removed because it wasn’t me doing it. I think my outcome is to help us all be active participants in caring for all of us, including the least of us.”

k.dorsey@theday.com

If you go

What: “Up from the Asphalt”

Featuring: New and recent paintings by Marvin Espy

Where: Lyman Allyn Art Museum, 625 Williams St., New London

When: Through Oct. 20; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tues.-Sat. and 1-5 p.m. Sun.; closed Mondays and major holidays

Admission: $12 adults, $9 seniors, $7 active military, $5 students, $3 for adults with SNAP EBT Card; free for kids under 12, members and New London residents

Contact: (860) 443-2545, lymanallyn.org