Faith or Doubt St. Peter
When a painting is made, something which did not exist now exist. Something is created, it comes into being. The painting becomes an art object, its own being, with its own qualities. The ambition of the Artist is to transfer energy, emotion, conscious and subconscious thought onto a physical surface. The Artist hopes to manifest and share an experience. This experience is unique and although it is the artist intention to share something with the viewer. Often it interpretated in the viewers own terms. Thus, the painting is unique taking on its own identity. The Artist is a creator, and the viewer allows space in which the creation can live.
The Artist Caravaggio’s representation of Saints broke from past painting imagery where holy persons where portrayed in gold sounded by kingdoms. He used people of the streets even prostitutes as his models for religious icons. This may have been a resource available and affordable to him at the time, but there is a symbolism and a shift in thinking on how Saints where portrayed. Caravaggio painted them as people with humanistic qualities representing figures from lesser class of society. They were painted and presented as those who did not have wealth and lived common lives not as aristocrats. Caravaggio it is rumored used a prostitute as his model to paint Death of the Virgin which was rejected at the time.
The Artist Michelangelo used symbolism to portray Saints. They would be painted with objects or with the symbol of their Martyrdom. For example, Michelangelo’s self-portrait in The Sistine Chapel is in the image of St Bartholomew who was skinned alive. In the painting he is holding his skin. This also was symbolic of how Michelangelo felt after completing this massive project.
I connected with these ideas when I painted this Portrait of St. Peter. In my painting St Peter is clasping his hands I removed the keys that he is often painted with symbolizing the keys to the kingdom of heaven. I left an open to interpretation of what he is doing with his clap’s hands. He could be praying. He could be preparing to hold the keys. Perhaps he is holding and examining something as a man of science which is symbolic of denying faith. I painted him unclothed being humanist and close to earth. I made him much younger than the way he often has been painted. I envisioned to be at that age when he took up his path. I left the beard one of attributes used to identify him.
