What Child Is This

Since I was a child, I'd always been pulled in by paintings depicting the Madonna and Child. Long ago, I promised myself that I'd take a stab at religious motifs when my skill could only pose a compliment to the subject. This painting is based on a french postcard from the turn of the century. It was the practice of many photographers at the time to hire prostitutes for these commercial photographs. Given that, I wondered if this was indeed the woman's child. The closeness seems too natural to be staged. And did the child grow up knowing his father or had he been forsaken?

Created on custom software programmed by the artist, using Processing and Java. Resolution: 16K x 24K. This painting required the artist to make 2,239 changes to 165 variables over the course of 12 man hours and consists of 148 layers consisting of 1,331,567 unique vector shapes and 54 different colors.