"THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN"

What this painting means to me:

The strength of womanhood and how the divine feminine is expressed in motherhood, thru the creation process that gives women the power, thru God, to incubate life and shape and form future worlds with her teachings and example, perpetuating the chain of eternal progression for God's children. Through the atonement of Jesus Christ is the mercy of God infinite with repentance, repentance being the way back to God. Becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ means understanding the Lords will, "If you know me, you know the father who sent me."

Why I choose the symbols I did:

The iconic photo of the pioneer mother praying with her children has always been a familiar photo I have grown up with seeing. My grandmother always had it hanging in her home along with some other photos from the era. Her brother, Rell Francis, had found them and had given them to BYU for their archives. She was always very proud of her brother. When it had become time to put her into assisted living I acquired the print. By then it had become to mean something special to me. I had gone through a heartbreaking divorce and taking care of my three children alone had become overwhelming at times. This photo had become a visual reminder of the importance of my responsibilities as a mother, and my deepest love for my children.

A little over three years ago, right around Easter, I gave birth to a son who was understood to be adopted by my brother and his wife because they couldn't conceive on their own. As I had taken many months to contemplate this sacrifice and what motherhood truly meant, my heart rested very close to the idea of God being the creator of life, Christ being the grantor of life, mother being the incubator of life, and man being responsible for the re-birth. I had been taking the paper at the time and an ad for Hobby Lobby covered the entire back page or the newspaper. It took my breath away because of the artistry, reverence, and message it conveyed. I looked up and saw the image of the mother praying and immediately I saw the two images fused together. Not sure what they meant other then they seamed symbiotic, so I immediately took pictures uploaded them to my computer and photoshopped them together. The image had no where to go. I was unsure how to make it a painting. My painting style was very traditional and never translate well to abstract ideas, so it got filed away.

I had known about the theme for the church show, and the thought had crossed my mind, but I was determined to do something on not judging the sinner, so the thought was shortly lived. Up until the beginning of 2015 I had been composing ideas focussed on the sinner and Christ's love for all mankind. I felt like there has been so many issues lately around acceptance and people wanting to be loved but receiving hate instead. But when it came time to make one of these ideas happen, none of them felt right. I wanted something that would teach, inspire, and not be an illustration of his life but represent the metaphors he taught. I looked through my archives and found the photoshopped image and pondered quite a few days about using it. The composition was incomplete. The idea of what it was hadn't formed yet and I had no idea what it was about. My sweet daughter told me I would never know until I started working on it. Feeling like I didn't have time to waste and knowing I would need it to be the one, I went to work.

The Process:

Back when I had visualized this concept, I had begun experimenting with painting inlayers using clear packing tape, and latex paint applied and sanded off, with the finishing touches in oil. It was a new process and I was inventing something I found interesting and useful in time management so I could juggle kids, college, and the responsibilities of life. I began with the simple sparrow as a test subject so I could focus on the process while still making images that were interesting for buyers. As I developed this technique and have refined it I have been able to paint more complex paintings with it, and as soon as I committed to painting this image I could see the benefit; and how there would have been no other way to accomplish the task, if I had not experimented with the process. The process all the sudden became a great tool in accomplishing the communication that I wanted to convey with the disciples in the children's night gowns.

The rays and the circles are very subtle on the finished piece, and only if you know what you are looking for will you find them. The 7 rays are symbolic of the 7 creation periods. The 12 circles on the outside represent the 12 apostles, the 12 mysteries of heaven, and the 12 signs in the heavens. The 3 circles down the middle represent the holy trinity, the three degrees of glory, and the fact that the woman head lies in one of the circles is my own views on the divinity of woman and her place in the Godhead. Christ foot is pointing to her to show his honor in her position.

As I started to contemplate what this image was, and what I was trying to say, I couldn't help but feel influenced by things I have studied and my personal feelings of all religions are of God and all the universal truths that exist in the world, how the world and all its culture and diversity is His. The idea of creating worlds and the creation is a subject I am quite obsessed about so I went looking for elements that could reflect creation, life, eternal principles and universal truths. 

Over the last three years of working with packing tape I learned the importance of having anchor points for the resin to adhere to the board directly. While originally designing small spaces for this to occur, I found that in designing this piece, I wanted the texture of the surface to also create a level of layering of realities. In order for the disciples to function under the clothing they needed to be subordinate texturally as well as in value, so cutting away pieces of the tape to allow areas of the surface to be painted in the more traditional sense became valuable.

While placing the disciples inside the children clothes was always part of the original plan, being able to do it so they did not over power the children but became a suggestion was fun to figure out. They had to be made strong on the underpainting so they could be pushed back in the final layer.

I didn't like the mothers face in the photo or her dress, so I altered the dress to give it a more majestic and open accepting feel rather than a closed almost school master old maid feel. I looked to John Singer Sargent for help on the face. Placing a crown on her head was also important for me to convey the message of divinity and the idea that all women are divine in the eyes of God. The fig leaf on her apron is an attribute to Eve, and the seed in the bottom of her dress is a reference to Alma 32 about planting a seed. And the seeds we plant in the hearts of the children stay they for a long time, even if they are bad, so it is important to plant good seeds.

The image of Christ and the disciples was a little difficult to get information from as it was a print, printed in a newspaper and I was limited to the amount of information my camera could pick up from it. I looked for other images to help me. The hands and head of Christ I retrieved from the Christus on Temple Square, and the feet I google imaged them.

I knew from the beginning of my layout that I would put a sparrow on the lamp shade, because the sparrow is an image I use for myself, but it also means faith, and it also carries the symbol of the Holy Ghost, so it, like most all of the symbols have many meanings and they all work with the language being spoken here. The elephant was a hard decision to make as I knew he would command a presence and I didn't want him to over power the image so he had to be handled very delicately, maintaining as much transparency as possible. However once he was in I knew I had to add another strong element, or animal in order to balance out the painting. The sparrow wasn't large enough to give the visual balance to compliment the elephant. I started looking up different animal meanings and when I found that the turtle was a symbol of creation, I knew I found the right creature to put under the table, but that still wasn't enough. The strong line under the elephant had no reason and was killing the composition. I searched days for a solution, when I came across the pelican, not only did the symbol of virtue resonate, but aesthetically he fit in with the group. It made sense to have another bird to counterbalance the sparrow. But in order for him to work he had to enter into the realm of no packing tape reality, so I had to cut his image out of the existing surface.

  As I began to finalize the painting, I still didn't have a title, and I still wasn't absolutely sure what this painting was about. It's the most from the gut piece of art I have ever created. But two primary songs continued to run through my mind. "Mother, Tell Me the Story" (with a theme like Tell me the stories of Jesus, and painting a mother, how can you not think of that song) and "A Child's Prayer" (only because the nature of the piece and the image before me). Once the painting was finished and I was pondering for days on a title, I finally decided to look up the lyrics of these two songs and read them thru seeing how they wouldn't leave my head. As I reflected upon the lyrics more closely, the phrase that stood out the most was the last sentence in the part the mother sings to her child, "Pray, he is there; Speak, he is list'ning. You are his child; His love now surrounds you. He hears your prayer; He loves the children. Of such is the kingdom, the kingdom of heav'n." So The Kingdom of Heaven it was. Only after I have had time to reflect on this piece, long after I submitted it, did I truly understand what it was, and how much my subconscious, and all the things I have studied came out without really understanding or seeing it as it happened. But the spirit that was in my studio, that I experienced, while creating this painting was truly remarkable and worth noticing.