“The iconic image of the Madonna and Child, seen throughout the history of western art, holds significant value in terms of stylistic innovations of religious subject matter that would continue to evolve for centuries.” 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_and_Child 

I felt I should add my version to this history of innovation. 

One of the turning points in my spiritual walk came when I realized that Jesus was a revolutionary and even a rebel. Growing up in a protestant evangelical church, I continually heard the call to surrender to Jesus and follow him as your Lord and savior. Since that message always came from older authority figures—when you are a child, particularly a youngest child, everyone is an older authority figure—I naturally associated following Jesus with submitting to the establishment. It was both a liberating and challenging revelation when I re-examined the accounts of Jesus and saw him marching to his own tune—the tune of his father—but courageously challenging the accepted norms and standards of his culture. He submitted to his father, but he would not bow to the pressures of society—so much so that they killed him for it. I realized that the problem was not that I wanted to rebel against the hypocrisy of the establishment and value system I felt was wrong; the problem was that I was so easily corrupted and willing to settle for so little.

This painting was a small act of rebellion for a protestant evangelical. For protestants nothing represents the abuses of the catholic church more than what we see as the worship of Mary. But, perhaps we need to examine the logs in our own eyes first before we try to help our brethren with the specks in theirs.

This work was a fun experiment. I enjoyed mixing the old with the new, like the “miniature man” proportions of the baby Jesus typical of the medieval style with the modern simplified lines of the face. I also experimented with a new painting style of glazing. I painted it first in monotone and then glazed the color over the top in places, particularly the flesh and the gold of the background and the trim of the robe, so the color is translucent and glows.

This work is not intended to be a doctrinal statement; quite the opposite, it is just a beautiful painting. Perhaps that is my doctrinal statement.