Last evening I was walking in the grocery store while waiting for my prescription to be filled. While manhandling the apples in the produce section, I started a conversation with a beautiful Nigerian woman about the ambrosia apples for sale. After fifteen minutes of chatting about apples, skincare products and NYC, we discovered we have the same name. While this isn't usually a big coincidence, it felt special to us because of our connection made next to the Jazz and Gala apples.
She began to speak of her husband's passing five years ago and its transformation on her life and mission. She is in her 60s and decided that her calling in life is to help others. She joined a ministry and since then has become ordained as a preacher, taking the name "Mary". I am not religious, but was raised Catholic and still respect religion; however, usually when people start speaking about God and the bible, my ears go numb. However, Mary was speaking of the effect that religion has had on her, and how it transformed her into a vessel of compassion and love. Here was a woman who let herself be vulnerable and open to love, speaking to strangers with no qualms. Her mission, she stated, is to lift up those whose spirits are at a low point, because we will all need this at some point in our lives.
In that moment when she explained this as her mission, I saw how beautiful she truly was. She has a spark which can only be described, for lack of a better non-cliched term, glowing. It's this spark, this vitality, that I can only aspire to capture in rendering a portrait of a person. I am still learning and observing, but I know that in my art--specifically, portraiture, this is my mission.
She began to speak of her husband's passing five years ago and its transformation on her life and mission. She is in her 60s and decided that her calling in life is to help others. She joined a ministry and since then has become ordained as a preacher, taking the name "Mary". I am not religious, but was raised Catholic and still respect religion; however, usually when people start speaking about God and the bible, my ears go numb. However, Mary was speaking of the effect that religion has had on her, and how it transformed her into a vessel of compassion and love. Here was a woman who let herself be vulnerable and open to love, speaking to strangers with no qualms. Her mission, she stated, is to lift up those whose spirits are at a low point, because we will all need this at some point in our lives.
In that moment when she explained this as her mission, I saw how beautiful she truly was. She has a spark which can only be described, for lack of a better non-cliched term, glowing. It's this spark, this vitality, that I can only aspire to capture in rendering a portrait of a person. I am still learning and observing, but I know that in my art--specifically, portraiture, this is my mission.