You can go to a museum and see old paintings of Mary and the kid. They follow a program of representation that goes back to depictions of Horus and Isis. Something about her fascinates me - but only in so far as alterations are invited: alterations that mirror the modern sensibility: that she smoke - as in the bottom image; that she be really pregnant when depicted - as in the middle; and that, as in the top image some ambiguity rest on the image. The mirror is my own preference for implying this. Mirrors have a long history in art. I think of Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Wedding for starters and more currently Brockhurst's Adolescence. Picasso used a mirror in a depiction of Mary Louise Walter.
You can go to a museum and see old paintings of Mary and the kid. They follow a program of representation that goes back to depictions of Horus and Isis. Something about her fascinates me - but only in so far as alterations are invited: alterations that mirror the modern sensibility: that she smoke - as in the bottom image; that she be really pregnant when depicted - as in the middle; and that, as in the top image some ambiguity rest on the image. The mirror is my own preference for implying this. Mirrors have a long history in art. I think of Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Wedding for starters and more currently Brockhurst's Adolescence. Picasso used a mirror in a depiction of Mary Louise Walter.
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