War Pieta, 2007. Oil on canvas, 50 x 60 inches.

I wanted to bring attention to the horror of war, and in this case the war in Iraq. I thought of a mother losing her son and the Pieta paintings of the Old Masters and of Michelangelo's sculpture, Pieta, showing the Madonna mourning the death of her son. In my painting I sought to symbolically connect, and contrast, the image of a real mother screaming in anguish over the death of her soldier son with the Old Master images of the Madonna mourning the death of her son in a rather unreal, quiet and serene way. The torn fatigues, the mangled soldier's body and the flag symbolize one of the many young Americans who have been killed in this war. I tried to paint the mother as a woman of forty and yet appear similar in looks, including the shawl, to the classic Madonna of Michelangelo's Pieta. The barren burning oil field wasteland compositionally and symbolically strengthens the concept of blood for oil. Above the black smoke of the burning oil field is an actual gold sky, again to make the connection to the religious paintings of the early Renaissance. For this painting I hired a wonderful photographer, Michel Legrou, to do a photo shooting with models posing in various positions and expressions. I used photography because a model posing could not hold the intensity of this expression. About 100 photos were taken and I selected three to work from that had the facial expression and pose I wanted. I referred to scrap reference for certain details such as the dead soldier's facial expression and wounded soldiers in battle. In order to help express my outrage against the real horror of war I amputated the soldier's arm and leg in my painting.

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