The Hanging Man VIII - The Baseball Player — Papayon | Oil on cotton paper 2025

The Hanging Man VIII - The Baseball Player — Papayon | Oil on cotton paper 2025

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The Hanging Man series explores the quiet weight people carry through the roles they inhabit.

Athletes, workers, first responders, and ordinary individuals appear suspended against empty space, removed from narrative and environment. Stripped of context, their professions become less important than the invisible burdens they endure: expectation, responsibility, sacrifice, discipline, and resilience.

Rather than depicting defeat or triumph, these figures exist in a moment of suspension. They hang between action and rest, certainty and doubt, endurance and surrender.

Each work in the series focuses on a different life and occupation, yet together they ask the same question: what do we carry simply because we believe it is our duty to keep going?

The Hanging Man is ultimately a meditation on persistence—not as heroism, but as one of the quiet conditions of being human.

Original work by Papayon — Latin American contemporary artist based in Houston, TX. Oil on canvas board, 20 × 30 in. Certificate of authenticity included. Ships worldwide from Houston

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From the Series

The Hanging Man

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About This Work

Artist's Note

When Brion first reached out, it wasn't about this painting.

There was another work he had connected with deeply, one that had already found a home. I had promised I wouldn't paint another version, so instead of recreating it, we reached out to its collector to see if they might ever consider letting it go.

The answer was no.

Oddly enough, that conversation became the beginning of this piece.

It made me think about why certain images stay with us and whether a work should ever be repeated simply because it was loved. I decided the answer was no. If another painting was going to exist, it had to earn its own place.

The baseball player emerged over time. It wasn't painted as a commission or as a substitute for the work that came before it. It became its own story.

When I finally shared it with Brion, the connection was still there.

Looking back, I'm grateful the first painting stayed exactly where it belonged. Otherwise, this one might never have existed.

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