Images of Moses talking to the burning bush and parting the Red Sea were swirling around inside my brain when I started this painting. I fight to keep religious imagery out of my paintings. Its not easy. Our house/gallery/studio was a Catholic church for 40 years before we converted it into a residence in the 90s. The church was never properly de-sanctified. I think there is a tooth from a saint buried under the spot where I paint, this relic was supposed to have been removed but somebody in the Catholic hierarchy was sleeping at the wheel. We may have been partly to blame because we put a big aggressive American Bulldog in this area before the de-sanctification process was complete. In any case, the tooth is often in conflict with me over the subject matter of my paintings. The tooth would be happy if I painted nothing but images of the Virgin Mary or other stuff from the Bible while I'm trying to create secular midcentury modernism. Sometimes I give in because the tooth scares me a little bit. But its not all bad, Moses was a very positive guy, filled with hope, so this painting fits in with the rest of the series.
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