Artist's Statement: The woman shown in the charcoal below had as much wealth and status as was possible for any woman in 5th century B.C.E Persia. She is Esther, beautiful and beloved wife of Ahasuerus, the all-powerful king of the Persian Empire. But at the moment shown, Esther is tremulous with fear and weak from three days of fasting. She is about to risk death by approaching Ahasuerus without having been invited and further by revealing to him that she is a Jew. That s

Artist's Statement: Sometimes the Oil Painting Can Be a Prototype If you have been following the past several postings, you will remember that I use charcoal drawings as prototypes, to help me better understand the images I want to depict in oil. On occasion, however, I will do an oil painting as a prototype – as in this week’s posting. Here’s the backstory. Shortly after I had finished the oil painting of the Egyptian Princess (posted last week), the model on whom I had rel

Artist's Statement: In previous posts discussing the way I use charcoal sketches as prototypes, I have mentioned that sometimes a prototype teaches me that I want to make changes when I turn to oil on canvas. The charcoal for this painting did not do that. Instead, the charcoal helped me bring out in oil the solitariness and reserve that characterized and befitted her as a princess and daughter of the Pharaoh. Oil On Canvas 28 in x 22 in But there are other words for priva

Artist's Statement: This week’s posting is another study in charcoal, a precursor to an oil painting titled “Egyptian Princess.” That painting and this charcoal are part of an ongoing series of “Strong Women of the Bible.”* ​ In contrast to the charcoal I posted two weeks ago of a head study, this charcoal shows the full figure of the Egyptian Princess who helped create a nation by taking a helpless baby from the Nile River and raising him as her son. The charcoal depicts B

Artist's Statement: Passover begins in two days, on the evening of March 27, 2021. The holiday marks the beginning of a people's travel that lasted 40 years. Of the many messages entwined in the Exodus story, one teaches of our human obligation to take care of "the other" – the stranger, the different. The Jewish people live because the baby Moses survived. The baby survived because of an Egyptian princess – Batyah – rescued, protected him and raised him – all in defiance of

Artist's Statement: I have been working for seven years on a group of paintings entitled Strong Women of the Bible. In this head study, I worked to explore the feelings that might have animated Batiya, as she contemplated the choice that would change her life and the world. A daughter of the Pharaoh, she found a weeping, male baby in a basket adrift in the Nile. She knew that her father had decreed the death of every first-born Jewish male child and she had no doubt the baby