Prayer for a Nation is in response to the fraught and polarized state of the country’s recent politics. The communal anxiety has been palpable such that I felt a longing for Americans to experience hope for the future in a post cynical era. 

The bald eagle is reclaiming the landscape after being endangered for decades. I removed the color from the body of the bird as a way of distancing from our deeply embedded cultural response to its iconic form, perhaps making it easier to appreciate it’s power without the baggage of it being a national symbol. 

With the tree, I want to convey a ying yang quality of the passage of time, including the vacillations of good times and bad through the cycles of time. 

A few years ago, I began to paint solitary trees of particular beauty on the grounds of a former Capuchin monastery. They evolved to become images of personal psychological states, allegories, and statements about current affairs.