Santo Domingo.- Dominican entrepreneur-cum artist Marcos Antonio, who became Providence, Rhode Island's first Director of Hispanic Affairs in 2001, has embarked on such an ambitious project that he fears “might end up killing me.”

Born in 1951 in Baitoa, a small town in the Dominican central mountains, Antonio began to work at the age of 5 to help support his family of 11, and like many townsfolk before him emigrated to New York, where a few years later joined the US Army during the war in Vietnam.

But back to the project. Antonio is painting hands, millions of them, and placing their print on giant canvases, around the world! He spoke with me in Baitoa recently, and sure enough took my handprint, and those of others, didn’t matter if it was midnight. He is here to take the country’s share of the prints and then he’s off to wherever until reaching the target: hands on gigantic paintings he said will cover entire buildings, parks, and you name across the globe, a la Cristo!

I was skeptical until I saw one of the canvases, which draws you in to gaze at the different hands and make you wonder about the people they belong to.

“There were people with six and seven fingers, hands clubbed with arthritis,” he said and in disbelief told us of a little girl he recruited to help him get the volunteers, whose “bed” consisted of a pile of wood where she was chained to at night.

But despite the subjects’ resistance to getting their hand painted, “I’m not going to let this kill me,” said Antonio, whose art works have traveled three continents.