Reginald Sylvester II in his Brooklyn studio.

Heavy duty canvas military tent halves with metal snaps. Rope. Razors. Rubber.

Reginald Sylvester II’s (b. 1987) paintings have weight. Literally and figuratively. Abstract Expressionism put in a blender with ready-mades.

His chosen materials are rough. They’re tough. Functional, hard-working items. Items recalled from childhood. His father was a Marine. The tent halves were a feature of his home.

This artwork wants to dig a ditch. The shirt on its back is sweated through.

“These are physical works,” Sylvester told Forbes.com.

That statement has a double meaning. Physical in their making. Physical in their viewing.

“We live in a digital age, but for me, I want to make works that call for bodies to gather, to come and experience them physically,” Sylvester explains. “You can only get a certain sense or essence of the work online or on your phone, but these works are meant for you to interact with physically.”

This is where Sylvester’s paintings depart from the merely physical and engage the spiritual. Where surface gives way to depth.

“I want people to be able to bury their suffering and their pain and their anxiety within these works,” Sylvester said. “And the person who's seeing the painting is charging the work, that person walks out of the space feeling lighter, almost like a therapy session, you let out all these feelings, you walk out of that space feeling like my shoulders feel lighter. That's what these works are meant for, these works are supposed to absorb one's anguishing.”

That’s a lot to ask of a painting.

These artworks, sturdy in their construction, strong in their materials, hold up under those loads.

A Rothko Chapel Army surplus store.

“Painter's Refuge: A Way of Life-A Solo Exhibition of Recent Work by Reginald Sylvester II” brings these disparate worlds together at the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts+Culture in Charlotte through January 16, 2023.

Reginald Sylvester II - Day of the Lord (2021 Acrylic on canvas 100 x 75 in)

Sylvester’s use of rubber stems from an interest in the mass murder resulting from Belgium King Leopold II’s reign of sadistic terror over what was known as the Congo Free State in the late 1800s. The Industrial Revolution’s craving for rubber met Leopold’s barbarism, racism and desires to see his country participate in the colonization of Africa in the vast ecological Eden in the middle of the continent.

The grisly horrors compare to the worst of Nazi Germany. Rape and the burning of villages as a practice. Feet and hands chopped off as punishment when failing to meet production quotas–the feet and hands of children of the men doing the work. A market for severed limbs developed. Slavery. Indigenous communities set against each other.

How many Congolese were killed during Leopold II’s death binge? Two million? Eight? Twelve?

With this founding, is it any wonder the Congo remains one of the world’s most unsettled areas?

“He was chopping children's arms off and hands off and limbs off as punishment and these physical atrocities, this work for me bears and harbors that pain and suffering, that energy, and I wanted these works to remember that history,” Sylvester said.

Unbeknownst to him at the time, his connection to rubber ran deeper than the academic. A familial connection was shared by an aunt after the paintings were completed.

“My great-great-uncles worked at a rubber plant in Natchez, Mississippi–all my family is from the south,” Sylvester learned of rubber production in another part of the world synonymous with the enslavement of Blacks. “(My aunt) was like, ‘It's crazy that you're using this rubber in order to make these paintings, but you had no clue that you had great uncle's that worked at a rubber plant for years and years.”

A Marine. Factory workers. Other family members were commercial fisherman and craftsmen.

“That's the men in my family, where they came from, they were making things and building things with their hands and I feel very fortunate to be able to tap into that history in the studio,” Sylvester said.

Fortunate their hard labor created a foundation upon which the artist could go to college and, while still working with his hands, avoid the callouses and heat and cold and backaches.

There exists a category of artists, unaligned in any way, undefined, connected only through their work in abstraction and the muscular, material, physical manner their paintings come together which Sylvester fits nicely into. Joan Mitchell, Robert Rauschenberg “Combines,” Mildred Thompson, Thornton Dial, Sr., Sam Gilliam, Anselm Kiefer. Artwork with forearms. Paintings in work boots.

Reginald Sylvester II - Misery (2021 Acrylic and dyed cord on U.S. military issue olive drab shelter ... [+] halves 86 x 74 in)

Sylvester’s work engages with more than toil and trauma.

“The basis of my practice, I like to speak about spirituality, religion, the human race and our relationship to God, so even when I'm working on these military tent shell halves, this concept of spiritual warfare comes to mind,” Sylvester explains. “I started to home in on getting these certain tent shells from the late 1960s, early 70s, during war time, also listening to a lot of Hendrix in the studio, and I wanted to speak about the battles that we endure internally, spiritually, and how that can be reflected on these surfaces.”

As the exhibition’s title suggests, painting is both a way of life and a refuge for the artist.

“Painting for me is a therapeutic practice, the act of making, it does a lot for me and my life. I really don't know what else I would be doing if I wasn't making paintings,” he said. “I'm also thinking about the way in which I'm living my life where I'm trying to live my life as a man and do things that honor God and thinking about him as my as my refuge and believing in him, keeping his laws and his commandments, and through that I can get to this kingdom, I can get to this heaven. I'm always thinking about that relationship between what I'm doing in the studio and how I can speak about those things in the work. This is the way I chose to live my life, it's almost like that title for me is a mission statement, painting is my refuge, this is the way in which I will continue to live my life until my time is up.”

Scott Avett, "Peanut Butter Bread with Sprinkles", 2022.

Sylvester was born in Jacksonville, N.C. near Camp Lejeune where his father was stationed. The family moved to Oakland when he was a toddler. Another artist born in North Carolina–this one a lifelong resident best-known for his work in another genre–also has an exhibition of his paintings on view in Charlotte.

Scott Avett, one half of the Gammy nominated The Avett Brothers, has been working as a visual artist along with his music career since graduating with a BFA from East Carolina University in 2000. His latest paintings can be seen and purchased at SOCO Gallery during “Purpose at Random,” opening September 14 and running through November 2. The gallery will host a question-and-answer session with the artist open to the public on October 5.