In the last few months I've been working on my own Annunciation scene. For anyone unfamiliar, the Annunciation is the scene in the Bible in which the angel Gabriel announces to Mary that she will bear the son of God. I've a book filled with nothing but Annunciation scenes, from my mother.

The tone and symbols of the various paintings are fairly consistent, considering that they range 16 centuries. Mary is usually praying or studying scripture in her home or garden when she is surprised by an angel of God bearing news of her pregnancy, and usually various sexual symbols are scattered around the painting. Behind Mary, a bed, a male angel entering the door of her home or the gate of her garden, a lily in hand or in a vase, and sometimes a ray of light pouring through a window toward her womb. Meanwhile, as Gabe drops the bomb, Mary is sometimes mildly shocked looking, but more often, morosely calm, her fingers still marking her page as she glances momentarily at the interruption.

In nearly all, the painting depicts a setting contemporary to the artist; an attractive European woman dressed in the humblest of European fashion surrounded by rich draperies in a lavish room, despite the subject matter of a young Jewish peasant girl. The most notable exceptions to the indulgent anachronisms are the versions by both James Tissot and Henry Ossawa Tanner.

As an attempt of my own, contemporary Annunciation, I'm working with spray paint on birch plywood. Irony is not the intent, of course, as a non-Christian. I think that the subject matter of religion is important, no matter how much one abstains from it in ones personal life.

Mariology

Blasphemy comes easily. I keep thinking about the Virgin Mary, since I'm finally nearing that part of my larger painting to start painting her. I've been sketching out some icons and a few cursory annunciation scenes. I'd rather like to do some studies in oil of some of the forms she's taken. Perhaps if this painting is successful I'll manage to do a separate approach to an annunciation.

The concept of the Annunciation intrigues me. There's such brief but important mention of it in the scriptures, and there are many unanswered questions. This is good, though, because there's then a wide range to explore; her age, her setting, her service, her fear. Did she resent the lack of choice? Did she rejoice? Really? What if a girl today was announced by an angel that she was impregnated by a deity?