Toddler with Bunny

This one was painted between 1995 and 1996 when my daughter was around 16 months old. It's a very large painting, 24x48 on masonite. As with most new parents, I was in love with my child and being a mom was a totally new feeling and experience, so I wanted to paint her. Along with the joy came her innocent ability to stir up feelings about my own childhood. Also, as with most new parents, I would sometimes feel a great sense of being overwhelmed by this new presence in my life and this accounts for the large size of the painting as well as her appearing as something of a giant between two roofs in the background. She confronts the viewer with her direct gaze making it impossible to ignore her... hmm much like a toddler! :0)

Jesus Enjoying a Good Laugh

In my spiritual walk, I had begun to think about who the human Jesus really might have been when he walked the earth and what His moment by moment experiences might have been like. Certainly, he came to complete a somber task, but in His 33 years, would His life have been all serious? I started to think about Him in an extremely personal way, like if I had met Him at the wedding at Cannan, could I have shared a good joke? In His human-ness, wouldn't he have had a laugh from time to time? Surely, humor is a gift given to us that I don't think God would have denied His Son. So, in my imagining of this, I developed the scenario depicted here. Kids being kids, they have just pulled some kind of harmless little prank and there they are giggling in the background. Jesus and one of His apostles are in the foreground enjoying a full belly laugh at the children's antics.