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Title: The Pearl
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 70” x 100”
Title: The Pearl of Great Price
As the conflict in Israel grew, I have had deep and abiding heartache from all the suffering of the past year. It is not something I really even know how to talk about and I find words failing me. I began this painting to help me process my feelings but with no clear plan or end in mind. I just wanted to paint how I was feeling.
From day to day, I’d spend time with the painting even just passing by it, and after a while I started to see it differently, instead of thinking of what i thought the story should be it seemed to me, that she had a story to tell me. I began to sense that the girl seemed to be hiding something. Simultaneously I was seeing all over social media a rise in antisemitism and ‘antizionism’ that was hard to believe. It became obvious to me that she was hiding her star of David necklace and so I got out my paint to give her the added detail of her hidden necklace. But I felt unsettled about it because I sensed that despite the past and what happened, God is doing something in Israel that I do understand, something new.
I found instead of the hidden necklace she was showing me something to hope as I found myself painting a single pearl. Something that symbolized one thing that represents more worth than everything in this world found in the story that Jesus told in Matthew 13:45-46.
Jerusalem Light 