Blessed

36 x 36, Oil on Linen

A few summers ago I joined a group of religious artists and actors gathering reference material near a pond in Ogden. After hours of posing in the sun, most people left. A small group that remained, including the man portraying Christ, and the conversation turned from what we were doing to sharing genuine feelings about what it means to follow Jesus. The mood shifted. What had begun as a day of gathering reference unexpectedly became a sacred moment, and this painting grew out of it. The girl drawing in the dirt near Christ echoes the story of the woman taken in adultery, whose story makes me think about Christ's grounded, compassionate response. Her pose was also inspired by a figure in Velázquez's The Spinners, which moved me when I saw it at the Prado. The blue Morpho butterfly had just been released. For me it became a small image of transformation; the freedoms that can come from letting go and choosing a different way of living.