Description: Many of my paintings begin following an uninterrupted semi-quiet period of background music from my southern rural childhood, which was both secular and sacred. The serenity and the beat of the music allow me to have the mental clarity that I need to capture the perceived image. In the case of The Madonna, what started out as a palette knife oil painting of a female turned into this abstract rendering of a woman holding a baby. Neither a date nor time is embedded in the work. What is shown is a woman wearing a loosely fitted dress with a scarf-like head covering of monochromatic blue holding an infant dressed in white. The crosshatched background reflects an acquired passion that I developed for picking up colors from the palette and rhythmically mixing them directly on the canvas. I like using this method as background for portraitures and cloudless skies.