A Brooklyn Artist and the Possibilities He Seeks in Work and Life

Noah Jemison spent his life teaching himself to see truth, or as he put it, “the reality that exists underneath” the surface.

It’s an approach that’s enabled Mr. Jemison, 81, to recognize potential where it is lacking, both through his art and in other areas of his life — including his apartment.

Before meeting a reporter for an interview in his home, he suggested connecting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The first stop was a gallery on the first floor filled with contemporary pieces by Black and Indigenous artists. Among them was a painting Mr. Jemison made in 1976, just two years after he’d first moved to New York, during a moment of strife in his personal and professional life.

He titled it “Black Valhalla,” in tribute to the “lost souls” of the Vietnam War.

The painting towers over six feet tall and features two figures, a male and a female, whose bodies take up the right side of the canvas. He said he’s proud of the work for what it accomplishes visually, beyond the fact that it was the first of his to be chosen for a major museum’s collection.

“Just like most of those paintings that were done in that particular period of my life, I was very consciously trying to impregnate empty space with kind of an intense energy,” he said. “Everything comes from out of nothingness into being, and nothingness is pregnant with possibilities.”