“Sanctuary” is the title of my newest Advent art exhibit. The work will be on display at Monroe Community Church, Grand Rapids, MI from December 8, 2024 – February 20, 2025. These paintings explore the idea of “sanctuary” as God’s physical dwelling place in Mary, Mother of Jesus and in the church.
This elegant Ohio custom house portrait was created as a combination birthday/anniversary gift. The collector and her husband have created a richly textured landscape for their traditional Cape Cod style home over the years…
This custom wedding painting celebrates the joining of two lives in a beautiful Seattle church. The bride and groom wanted to celebrate their paper wedding anniversary with a custom watercolor of their wedding church.
It is years now that I return to this subject matter of Italian architecture and it seems natural to share the origins of my inspiration. I was reminded of it all on my most recent trip to Italy to study Romanesque churches for the Passages exhibition. I’ve illustrated this post with sketches from fall 2023, though I’m writing about my first encounters with sacred spaces in Italy, 25 years previous.
I am excited to announce an Italian architecture painting exhibit at the Schnormeier Gallery at Mt. Vernon University in Mt. Vernon, Ohio. This solo exhibit includes forty-five paintings, drawings and monotypes inspired by Italian architecture. There is a series of 10 new drawings and several new paintings from my most recent trip to Italy in 2023. The show will be on view from January 11 – March 15, 2024.
I have often gone several years without creating prints, but I always return to it. Reflecting on how I have arrived at this new collection, I now realize that it has taken many years of research and practice to arrive at this point where I am able to create monotypes in my home studio whenever I desire. I spent a lot of time researching how to create a non-toxic, space-saving monotype process. Spurred on by a desire to retreat from oil painting during my pregnancies, I enlisted the help of artist friends to brainstorm.
The complex architectural space of St. Matthew’s Cathedral was particularly challenging. For instance, a variety of materials (mosaics, marble, plaster, gilding, wood) cover Historic St. Matthew’s Cathedral in DC. How do I paint each element in a way that contributes to the whole painting? How do I communicate the shimmering array of textures and colors within this beautiful cathedral?
Pienza is a hilltop town, and past this doorway the ground drops steeply into stairs. To me this painting represents how we look at the future in this moment. We see something beautiful, but hazy right now. Because of the pandemic, it is difficult to discern how far off that landscape may actually be and how we might arrive there.
My newest Marian painting “Interrogatio: Inquiry” depicts that moment of questioning “How can this be?” when the angel announced the Christ’s coming to Mary at the Annunciation. Mary’s vulnerability before God is represented here by the nude female figure. The grand space of the architecture represents God’s overpowering presence. The architecture also becomes a metaphor for Mary herself, often referred to in medieval texts as the Temple or dwelling place of the Lord because of her role in the Incarnation.
In a similar way, I returned to the shapes and images from my time in Assisi many times. I felt a sense of mystery in the images of rhythms of dark and light. Through drawing and painting I explored the arches of an alleyway multiple times. For me it was not simple documentation of medieval architecture. To me these passageways were like my pilgrimages themselves -a path to something beyond what was visible.
These thumbnail sketches of Saint Matthew’s Cathedral, Washington DC, lay out the plans for my first commission project of 2021. It’s exciting to start a new project at the beginning of a new year. Full of vision, possibility, options, agility. Creating thumbnail sketches like these intimate studies is like peeking around the corner at a fork in the path. Where would this take us? Will this plan accomplish our goals?
The arch in this painting is called the “Porta Postierla”, which leads out of the clifftop town of Orvieto, Italy and down towards the train station. The road criss-crosses the path of the funicular which is the way most tourists arrive in Orvieto. But when I lived there I loved to use the slower, medieval path.
This new painting depicts the Basilica of Saint Benedict of Nursia in its current partially-ruined state, after the earthquakes, enveloped in scaffolding. Fragile. Waiting. Precarious. It has become more poignant in recent months…
I created these church interior drawings as studies for a previous series of paintings of cathedral architecture. Each intimate drawing explores the space and emotion of the beauty of sacred space. As a result, they hold new poignancy during this time of the COVID-19 pandemic. During this time many of us have been separated from our houses of worship and faith communities due to social distancing regulations.
After I painted the Historic Church of Saint Rose in Perrysburg last year, a local family suggested a painting of Saint Joseph Parish across the river as a special anniversary gift. Her parents were married at St. Joseph Parish in Maumee, Ohio. Since they are still parishioners there, she thought a painting of the historic church would be a memorable gift to celebrate their years together. The architecture of churches communicates the eternal, where God comes to earth…
A few days before Easter 2019 we all watched in shock as fire enveloped a great monument of Christian architecture, Notre Dame Cathedral of Paris. Just a few days before I had discussed with my two homeschool co-op classes about Pope Benedict XVI’s charge to be “custodians of beauty”. In his address to artists in 2009 he tasked artists with the responsibility of being “custodians of beauty”. I strongly believe the call is to all of us.
Divine Dimensions Exhibit My figure drawings and architecture paintings will be featured in “Divine Dimensions”, a two-person exhibit at 20North Gallery in downtown Toledo from April – June 2019. The…
In 2016 an earthquake and aftershocks crumbled many parts of the town of Norcia, birthplace of Saint Benedict, founder of Western monasticism. The Monks of Norcia and their rebuilding become symbols of hope in the Catholic church.
The medieval city of Civita di Bagnoregio is a place of mysterious layers, buildings destroyed by earthquakes and time, where you can see the evolution of the centuries of construction and destruction. In the process of layering new paintings on top of old I found metaphors for both the place itself and memories of it.
Teaching and Art-Making. Teaching and Art-Making: Classical Education Paints A Door to the Past. Recent paintings and a return to teaching serve as a reminder of the past and…
Last spring a friend approached me wanting to gift a print of the church to her daughter for First Communion. I thought it was a great idea and got busy. I published pictures of the watercolor in progress and set up pre-orders for prints of the painting and it was a big hit!
The exteriors of local churches shape the landscape of daily life-about-town, but their interiors have helped shape spiritual lives for centuries. In Europe, cavernous sacred spaces were built for throngs of religious activity, but now hold only shadows of those presences. The shapes of archways reaching towards heaven, the rhythm of dark and light passing through complex spaces inspire a sense of quiet awe and shadowy mystery.
These new paintings have become my own reflection on the work of rebuilding tradition. One commemorates the Basilica as it looked before the earthquake. The second depicts it in its currently ruined state. One painting was commissioned by a Catholic, the other by a Protestant, and so together they are a witness to the influence of the great Saint Benedict on Christian life.
When I was a child I wanted to be an architect. I understood early on how built space shapes our human experience. I channel this love of architecture into my work…
This Friday, July 11 will be the opening for the Summer Juried Exhibit at White Stone Gallery in Philadelphia, PA. I am very excited to have my painting Pilgrimage: St….
With spring officially here, and winter un-officially sticking around, “Inside Out[side]” is an appropriate exhibit title for this time of year. I have two paintings hanging in the show by…
For the month of December my sacred architecture paintings will be on exhibit at IMAGINE: Northampton, a small, non-profit gallery and church in Northampton, MA. Northampton has a very active…
As a part of Park Street Arts, my series of architectural interiors will be on view at Park Street Church in the heart of Boston until October 19, 2013. This exhibit of paintings and prints is entitled Pilgrimage. The one-point perspective which dominates the compositions implies a destination. Our lives here on earth are the journey to that destination, a pilgrimage journey towards God.
On display now at the Ashland Public Library is a series of my prints and paintings entitled Convergence. The title “Convergence” has two origins, and these two meanings themselves “converge” in the paintings. In part, “convergence” describes how, in ecclesiastical architecture in particular, celestial and terrestrial converge in built space.
Concordia College — New York in their Journey of Faith exhibit. This exhibit paired artists with churches in Bronxville, where the college is located, in order that the artist might create a work of art specifically in response to that space. I was pleased to be selected, and was paired with St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Bronxville.
A few weeks back we spent the weekend on Cape Cod for a little get-away. One of our excursions was to the Church of the Transfiguration in Orleans, Massachusetts. The Community of Jesus is an ecumenical Benedictine community made up of brothers (friars), sisters (nuns), and laypeople. They began building this testament of faith in 1997, hiring architects, liturgical consultants, and artists from all over the world to complete the narrative of salvation the building tells.
My most recent commission project was two wedding gift watercolors intended as presents for summer weddings. I so enjoy when I am able to work with one of my favorite subjects (church architecture).
Some recent paintings and drawings of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, on the occasion of the beatification of Pope John Paul II. John Paul II prayed for a “Primavera dello Spirito”: a Springtime of the Spirit. His prayer for a “Springtime of the Spirit” was answered in a multitude of ways, from the flood of youth who attended the World Youth Days (which he began).
The theme of the winter issue of Ruminate magazine was “Sound and Silence”, and I was pleased that two of my prints and one of my paintings were chosen to as a visual representation of the theme. Sojourners Magazine’s Julie Polter recently said Ruminate has “staked a claim in the publishing borderlands where grit and religious devotion”.
When classes are in session I don’t always have the time I would like to engage in long studio sessions, but I always try and keep things moving by doing small drawings, watercolor studies, or even just taking a few minutes during my figure drawing class time to make a few gesture drawings while the model is posing. These drawings are some small studies I did in my parish church (Our Lady Help of Christians in Newton).
I am pleased to be able to share the completed painting for Saint Thomas Aquinas Parish in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. I worked on this painting through the spring and finally finished in July. I love being able to share my love for church architecture with a living community. The painting has been printed into notecards for sale for the benefit of the parish.
My latest church interior painting is to benefit the local parish of St. Thomas Aquinas in Jamaica Plain, several miles from where I live. What you see is the skeletal “work in progress” – still much to be done!
My painting of “Mary the Font” was inspired by, and is now in the collection of, Valparaiso University Chapel. During the Artist-in-Residency I had at Valparaiso University in December I…
I have begun two new paintings (and have two already in process) to work on this week in the chapel at Valparaiso University. The chapel at Valpo was built in 1959 and is a masterpiece of modern architecture — it is a landmark for the area.
Friday of the second week of our stay in Orvieto we spent a day in Rome, always an amazing experience. In the morning I went to the Villa Borghese museum with a small group of students to see the special Francis Bacon-Caravaggio exhibit.
© 2024 Michelle Arnold Paine.
