Farmer Sarah Portrait

Here's the portrait of my dear friend Sarah. She's an organic farmer at Red Fire Farm in Massachusetts. Her clothes here hopefully evoke the colors of the land through the year. This piece was my entry for the National Portrait Gallery Contest. Roger C Ingraham took this photo portrait of me with the painted portrait an hour after I finished it.




After painting the below, I realized my face proportion math was off and repainted her eyes.

Nefertiti Mary

This piece, still in process, is a question about the nature of Mary (and some on Jesus). Where'd she come from? Who is she? What does she do? It seems to me that Mary is truly a virgin. But virginity from a cosmos perspective is different from our current mainstream society's perspective. Mary might not be a solitary woman. Nefertiti herself in sculpture has all beauty and yet no individual personality. "Virgin Mary" seems far more likely to reflect the Great Emptiness that can create all things. The Full Void requiring nothing more to give birth. William Henry has fascinating things to say about Jesus arriving through a portal (Mary?). The Egyptians chiseled the idea into their temple walls.

Mery, the Egyptian of our "Mary", means "Beloved, Cherished". And Nefertiti means "The Beautiful One is Among Us." I am certain this is true for us currently. The stone sculpture of Nefertiti's head was carved in ancient Akhetaten sometime around 1335 BC, more than 3300 years ago. It was found in 1912. That's a long time for her to sit quietly unseen. Her mummified body has not been found, nor has the grave of Mother Mary or Mary Magdalene. And yet people see Mary all over earth. And they always say that she is the most beautiful lady, and that when she appears, the air smells like roses. Baby Jesus here (who's waiting for some more paint on him) is a portrait of my eldest nephew, James, when he was 7 months old. He's got a real gentle sweet heart himself! And is bright and wonderful like his little brother Michael and baby sister Aly. Having met some of the special people that are being born on earth now, I'm glad for our world that they're here.

Here Nefertiti's face is painted into the person of Mary. This Mary is from a painting by Carlos Crivelli in 1480. Awesome fabric, huh?! It's got stars and stuff. I also like how Crivelli had a cracking wall in front of Mary and Jesus. Jesus, our great human, is cracking the division structure. He's not Another Brick in The Wall. You might see at the bottom, Mais je connais pas le Pere. Which is to say that I don't know who the Father is, and that I don't know the Father, cause I don't believe I do yet. Is in French as a wink to Mary Magdalene. I'm kinda hoping she'll help me out on that one.

Stars like our Sun are born. To quote Heinz Pagels, "Stars are like animals in the wild. We may see the young but never the actual birth, which is a veiled and secret event." The stone carving in the statue of Isis near Memphis says, "I am everything that was, everything that is, that will be and no mortal has yet dared to lift my veil." I think it's so rockin' that she says, "No mortal has dared," rather than, for instance, "No mortal can." (Who is Isis? That's another good question!) Jesus is the Son, the Sun, a star. From a personal behavior perspective, to me that means that the more we shine, give warmth unconditionally, faithfully without asking for anything, the more we become a sun. I like what Hafiz has to say about it:

Even after all this time
The sun never says to the earth,
"You owe Me."

Look what happens with
A love like that,
It lights the Whole Sky.

So this is what I feel about all that...


A blue rose often represents the attainable unattainable state. They're somewhat ubiquitous in Tibetan depictions of Green Tara and surround her aura or portal (along with red roses). William Henry says there's something going on with blue apples and Mary Magdalene. A rose can also be a perfectly structured sphere, flower of life, or the spiral that leads to the center and from the center out.

(The photos below were taken with my computer camera, which reverses the images. The one above was taken with a conventional camera, so it shows the painting composition as it is.)

"Her Good Heart": November 22, 2008

The date is set for my One Night Show! Saturday, November 22nd, beginning at 7pm at my home, ClearPoint Center, in Stafford, Connecticut. (For directions, please see our ClearPoint website)

The theme is Her Good Heart, and we'll see what paintings develop out of that this fall. In my next post, I'll share with you some of my new and developing pieces. Thanks for visiting!