Shrine Painting 1

$100 [+shipping] : Oil on panel : 8 x 8 inches :

Artists are drawn to subject matter according to who they are as a person and nothing reveals their depths of an artist like what recurs as their art subjects.  For some time I have been interested in art's ability to convey the spiritual experience of our species.  However while I tend to look for this spiritual aspect in other's work I have struggled with how best to convey this in my own art.  This has been especially tricky for me with my oil paintings which I feel by themselves don't necessarily convey what I feel but more what I see. In this short series of shrine paintings I discovered the simple solution was painting the objects which hold a significance that I am trying to explore in paint (seems ridiculously obvious now that I am writing about it).  This particular painting focused on the full scene of the small shrine I had in my studio.  There are so many elements to constructing a shrine for me which are all very intuitive yet also very deliberate like composing a still life.  This painting captures some of that holistic staging of a mini environment.