18 × 24 inches | Acrylic on canvas | 2015

CA$670 — Original artwork available

This painting was the first one I completed after university. During my fine arts studies, I often felt that my faith was unwelcome in the artistic environment. I had watched artists with alternative believes be celebrated for their personal expression, but mine was somehow deemed distasteful. I managed to put my core beliefs into my work by way of depicting hands. 

Hands are a powerful model for emotion and action. what we speak, we often do so with our hands. We dance, pray, create, embrace, work and play with them. When I was free to create artwork that truly depicted what hands meant for me, I landed here. As a Catholic convert, it is held that God uses the physical to help us grasp the spiritual.

Pray Your Way Out is a set of hands emerging from the darkness, wielding a rosary with a blue glow. The blue glow represents the rosary as a lifeline, a gift from Our Lady that draws us into meditation on the life of her Son. The texture of this painting is very rigid, meant to express the reality that we are moving through a broken world, guided by the light, and hopefully, being the light for the world, as Christ put it. The rosary was a gift I received as a child. It is made of real pressed rose petal beads, and still smells of roses today.

Interested in a fine art reproduction of this piece? Get in touch!