This is a commissioned piece painted at S. A. Walton Studio on a custom built-wooden cabinetry substrate . It was done for a young married couple who requested a Day of the Dead style “kissing skull” design that has been a popular theme in their age group. I accepted the challenge, but wanted to personalize it in a unique and meaningful way just for them.

I wanted to lighten the mood, so to speak, and decided to use Passion Vine flowers, rather than the traditional roses of the iconic Day of the designs familiar to travelers in Mexico, while drawing inspiration from a Biblical verse that seems a particularly good piece of advice for newlyweds to “be not anxious but to cast their cares on God. “

The Passion Flower is a gorgeous group of plants native to the American Southeast and to points south, which have long been associated with Christ and His crucifixion, his apostles, the Holy Trinity, and the crown of thorns. It is ready-made religious art.

The Raven in my painting recalls the verse in the Bible, Luke 12:24, advising us to “Consider the ravens.” Ravens, often scorned and associated with darkness in Europe for centuries while also being admired around the world as to be problem-solvers of great intelligence, actually play an important role in the Bible for being tasked with feeding one of God's prophets in the wilderness. They neither sow nor reap. They instead do what we humans often forget to do, or are too proud to do, and rely entirely and un-anxiously on God to provide for them. In this task, they dutifully undertook the burden of feeding a prophet even though they already relied entirely on God to provide for their own survival needs. That’s some faith. And He provided them not only with their usual fare, but with enough to share.

In my design here, the Raven also serves as a ring bearer, for they truly do admire shiny objects but (unlike humans,) not so much that they hoard them. They readily give their treasures away, often leaving things in trade for something else or simply leaving them for reasons of their own. It is all OK, they know God is good and will provide his creations, even ravens of the barren places and wilderness, with new treasures throughout their lives. By faith in God can we be as free.

Here I also included the fritillary butterfly, an insect that undergoes an extreme transformation from lowly caterpillar to glorious beauty, to remind the owners of this piece of the resurrection to come, and of Christ’s transfiguration.

The male skull bears a crown with a grape and vine motif which also has great meaning for those whose sins have been washed away by He whose blood was shed for us.

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