Jacob’s ‘property’ Ladder

Painted in oil with urgency and abrasion, Jacob’s “Property” Ladder responds to the gentrification of Falmouth as a lived reality rather than an abstract process. Drawing on the biblical image of Jacob’s Ladder, the work inverts its promise of ascent into a symbol of exclusion, where rising property values climb upward while local communities are pushed out.

The surface is worked aggressively, with buildings scraped, dissolved, and compressed into one another, reflecting a town eroded by speculation and impossible rents. Ladder-like forms cut through the composition as barriers rather than pathways, suggesting a system that rewards ownership while dismantling belonging.

Painted with grief often mistaken as fury, the work is rooted in empathy and lived experience, witnessing the loss of communal life that made places like Falmouth desirable in the first place. It speaks to displacement, extraction, and the quiet violence of being priced out of home.