This wall that the painting resides on is a direct inspiration of one of my favorite works, Michelangelo’s famous Last Judgment at the Sistine Chapel, and this is a direct quote from that fresco, to scale, placed basically in the same place it would be in the original composition. My husband Andrew was very ill at the time I created this painting, which I always wanted to do anyway, but I felt it especially apropos to do it during this period, as I was nursing him to health and when he was sleeping, wishing him the very best by meditating to this painting. Michelangelo was equally great at painting as he was sculpture—some of his anatomy is wonky, but he makes it work, and by following his strokes (or in his chisel marks in his sculpture) you can really learn something. While his folds and wrinkles don’t necessarily go into other worlds like El Greco or Duccio, there is a warmth, a synesthesia that happens in the corporeal attitude of his forms, lines, and gestures. They aren’t as wacky as some of those others, and perhaps, in their sobriety, the better for it, yet there is a true transcendent quality to his figures, that seem so alive, while at the same time he is able to embrace his desires, the profane in addition to the sacred, in how he renders his figures, despite whatever gender that purport to be, they are sensual, though not eroticized, even in this figure (and his accompanying spooning angel!) as he is being levitated to resurrection. Andrew thank goodness got better, and it was edifying and cathartic to infuse my passion for him and his good health through the act of making this painting.