Weathered Angel

This picture is based on a photograph taken in 1918 by Paul Castelnau of a Palestinian woman smoking a pipe in Jerusalem. Her posture and expression in the photo intrigued me and in my interpretation she is a winged angel figure who, despite her magical appearance, is grizzled and worldly. This piece was also partially inspired by the short story A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings by Gabriel García Márquez, a short tale about a man with wings that crashes onto the land of simple folk and is imprisoned in their chicken coop for the entire village to gawk at. His vivid description of the beauty and horror of the old man was a great influence on me.