a couple of small oil paintings on panel done in the last year.

John's Vermeer - 9 x 12 in. Oil on panel.

My wife said she was 'comissioning' me to do a painting. I figured maybe a nice little landscape. She said; " I want a Vermeer." Gulp! I can't copy a Vermeer, I said. Just try, do your version of it, she said. Well, here are the not so great results.

The present stage of things on this work

Quite a different state tonight as I stop. All along I have been thinking of the incredible story of St. Filumena (Philomena) Here I see her in the company of martyrs looking down thru the veil of time to those below who call upon her.

Recent painting

A recent painting entitled 'Woman at Prayer '.  I have always liked the stark look of the Spanish Baroque paintings of Francisco Zurbaran. Many of his works reflect the new Counter Reformation ideals of the Catholic arts to portray the sacred with the importance on the figure in the forefront.  His wonderful paintings of St. Francis of Assisi certainly show this mindset. All fluff and unnecessary background imagery is to be discarded if it does not support the figurative subject.  The paintings were to inspire devotion to the mysteries of the Sacred with little mind to the earthly environment which passes so quickly.

New Painting:The Young Soprano

Here is a new painting. The title is 'The Young Soprano'.

The inspiration is from a Sunday a few weeks ago. In the Parish church where I go for Mass, there was a woman looking over the sheet music and rehearsing her part. Her voice was well set and she, just looking at a section of a Handel Oratorio, was practicing her part without any care who was listening or watching. I was dumbfounded; to be able to sight read music (either sung or performed) to me is a gift to be admired. This young lady with the beautiful voice raised my spirits so I thought I would honor her. In this painting I imagined a singer, during Handel's time, practicing in the warm glow of a candle's light.

Fleeing the world

I have just finished a piece called FLEEING THE WORLD.

It presents the viewer with a woman, looking back over her shoulder and hand outstretched. By her gesture we are told to stop; to not follow but let her go on into the dark arched tunnel.

What inspired this work was a good deal of thought and reading on a subject quite un related yet not really. I have been reading and reflecting on St. Francis of Assisi and his love of solitude. There was always a little bit of the eremetical calling in him. He prefered remote mountain places for his abode. During the time before he left the world he was wont to go up into the old Etruscan tombs on Mt. Subasio (or caves) and there to give himself to continual prayer to better know the God who was calling him to an intimate and most dramatic calling.

Many are the great hermits and anchorites of centuries past who fled society and it's corruptness to the spirit.

And so my woman does the same. She wants no attention from the world, no praise for her act. She seeks only paradise and the things of paradise.