The Apprenticeship's Path

Religious iconicity has always been an influence, the forms found within the works but also the context it holds.  Over the last several years Bellini’s Madonna and Child paintings, though I am not Catholic, has been the latest catalyst for the desire to emulate the religious influence. The ETRO Agenda on How to Study in the ZSB 6 series contained this first sign of this religious devotion within my body of work. Traveling around to churches and museums in Europe the ETRO Agenda is full of drawings studies; Mantegna’s Lamination of Dead Christ, Bellini’s Madonna and Child, Bronzino’s The Panciatichi Holy Family, multiple El Greco paintings as well as many others, and it is in these studies that the current series of Madonna and Child Studies is originated from. Keeping the series as studies of the source provides the image with the search in both the formal and conceptual elements, something that  has been a struggle in previous works.