Remain in Me: Layers of Faith Series III

acrylic gouache, FW ink, colored pencil & gold leaf on dura-lar

The use of gold leaf in my pieces is meant to represent God’s relationship with believers through the Trinity. God exists around us, the Holy Spirit dwells in us, and Christ Jesus is reflected to the world through us. As a Christian, He remains in me and I seek to remain in Him with the same faith that joined me to Him when I first believed.

This piece was the third in my three-piece Layers of Faith series exploring the complexity of faith and our profound relationship with God. This was also my most complex dura-lar painting of the three. Pruning the Vine and Life by Faith's color was almost completely applied to the back of the film, while the black line art and background were applied to the front. Though the line art is still entirely drawn on the front in this piece, color is layered on both the back as well as the front. Even the patterned background is composed of colors layered on both sides. The application of the gold leaf was also more challenging to achieve the intricate lines of the birds.

In the images below you can better see some of these details as well as some experimenting I did. One of the challenges of adding color to the back of dura-lar is that, due to the opaque nature of the matte finish, the colors will appear different when viewed through the front. It took a few practice pieces to achieve the right skin tone and hair color.