People With No Names - The Undocumented #26

I kept trying to paint this Nogales Mary exactly as I had photographed her, and it just wasn't working. Then I stumbled on the Bonnard painting of a little girl at the table...the one where the canvas is almost totally filled with a white breakfast table littered with all manner of foodstuffs. I realized that if I put "my contemporary Mary" (the immigrant who is 4 mos. pregnant and trying to travel with her husband to the United States) into this composition it would be redolent with meaning, as well as working as a painting composition. Thankyou Pierre Bonnard! Now my painting makes me think of the 'Table of Plenty' song we sing at church, especially the line, "God will provide for all that we need, here at the table of plenty".

Works In Progress #3

Here I am just reducing the Nogales Mary to its basic geometry. I don't know why but the simplest elements are always the most powerful...probably a good metaphor for our lives.

Works In Progress #2.

This is a preliminary sketch for a painting of a young woman, pregnant, deported, doing the dishes in a refugee center. She is a modern day Mary, the mother of Jesus. Father Gregory Boyle says, "to embrace the strategy of Jesus is to be engaged in downward mobility".