This is one of my most favorite paintings I have ever created and a seminal work that I have with me since I first painted it. We were living on 87 Christopher Street in a tiny apartment with the bathtub in the kitchen, and I talked my super into letting me use the basement furnace room as a studio. It was meager, but romantic. In this time in my ‘20’s, I was spiritual searching (really, a lifelong pursuit), and growing up with a non-religious Jewish Father and Southern Baptist Mother I was a religious mutt, and my way into Catholicism and Christianity was Jesus Christ Superstar, the musical.

I was sincerely listening to this great music (the movie soundtrack music), painting this image from the cd cover, kind of like Woody Allen looking into the winky-dink of Jesus in Annie Hall, wondering what it all means, but wanting to believe.

This was from a picture of Palm Sunday from the CD booklet, and I wasn’t sure if I liked the initial rendering I created.  But then, I allowed myself to “go for it,” listening to the music, allowing for automatic painting to be become abstracted, (as I was hoping my figurative work was becoming), allowing its ecstatic ecstasy to come through.  In the end, unconscious figures immerged. I think of a floating bunny form showing Christ a bird—and then discovered the Raphael’s Madonna of the Goldfinch and the symbolism of Christs’ Passion.  I also see a sheep on the right-hand side, many figures, and the whole composition on the right seems like a profile.  The work gives me hope and acting as a talisman of good energy and all that I strive for in my painting.