I painted a student of mine named Billie and this is my portrait of her older sister. I cannot be sure but I think her name was Brittany. One day Billie came to school with a slightly blackened eye which she said was given to her by her sister. It is that reason that I chose to paint Brittany as an angel. I have read biographies of different religious figures to increase my knowledge of religion and faith and to broaden and clarify my own understanding of my belief in God. This painting was a play on my own religious connotations of the dichotomy, validity, and absurdity of having both an “all good” and an “all powerful” deity. It was Billie’s black eye which gave me the idea of painting Brittany as an angel; as a metaphor of “why are bad things allowed to happen to good people.”And since I created this work I have always thought of it as just “Angel.” So that title eventually displaced the memory of her actual name in my brain; which echoes how my religious and physical studies have displaced the logically incongruous teachings of my youth.
Billie’s painting was an acrylic under painting with oil glazes on top. It is the usual method of how I paint. Acrylic dries quicker, is much easier than oils to clean, and thus makes it far simpler to block out with and create compositions. Oil is, of course, beautiful and with the acrylic underpainting it creates a very deep, solid, and layered appearance.
But I never finished Brittany’s angel. I didn’t begin the oil layer for another 23 years but that, chronologically, is for a later post.