Description:
Mary (42" x 60") --NA
I began 'Mary' while studying Luke in the Bible. This describes Mary's pregnancy, her interaction with her cousin Elizabeth, along with the birth of Jesus. A year into working on the collage, I also began looking into Revelation 12 which is the story of a woman who is given eagle wings to flee to the wilderness. Many believe this story refers to Mary or is representative of Israel or the church at large. As a whole, I kept returning to Luke 1:39, "In those days Mary arose..." An angel had just told her that she would be carrying the Son of God and she replied, “I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” The more that I studied her, the more that I revered (and feared) her courage, her power, her humility, her gentleness, her beauty, and her directness. I began to see her as a fiercely protective mother of all children. I used the robin, a symbol of renewal, to help represent this.
Materials used in the piece include duplications of photographs, graphite, pastel, ink, charcoal, gesso, oil paint, gold leaf and thread. As a background image, I used a drawing/painting that I had done on heavy watercolor paper with the help of artist, Gala Bent, years ago. This paper was cut and stitched onto a stretched canvas.
—Mary in progress:
process:
I worked on this collage for a few years before eventually completing it in December 2016. I’ll often take pictures on my phone as I work. Sometimes, I pull the images in Photoshop to try different elements before incorporating them in the collage — but most often, I just work directly on the canvas and end up with several layers of paint and cut paper. This series shows part of the process.
