Virtues I

Virtues I was initiated on Summer Solstice 2025, during the seasonal local arts festival Art in the Garden. The painting was born in the same wooded glade in which I started Seraphim I last autumn, but just as planets and stars are in completely different places seen from Earth nine months apart, the experience of painting each Angel was quite different.

Virtues I  is created through an entirely intuitive painting process—even at the start, I did not know which of the weird, middle Angelic Orders the painting was going to be. They are all so abstract, known only according to their qualities and elements of creative function that they govern—as the entire Universe is creative function, flashing in and out of layers of materialized being. 

I was a few layers in, feeling my way and trusting, when it at last became clear that this painting wanted to be the Virtues. After that, painting became a process of making some elements become absorbed into the layers, and drawing others forth and realizing them, all according to what Virtues I wished and wanted for itself, and it became my sole task to realize that to the best of my ability. No wonder the painting is a little weird! But when I behold the painting, many of the elements that are visible were there in incipient form on the very first day. All the angel paintings have been like this.

Virtues order Nature and bestow miracles—they are agents of the miraculous, brilliant and shining. I feel like this painting has a childlike quality, a lot of strength and power, and a happily 1980s-music vibe.

The series will be available for purchase as a unity, all nine paintings, in 2026, after an exhibition in which they are all shown together.