The Winds Tagged Rafaela with a Star

frame: 4” diameter, box: 6 ½” square, paper ornament: 4” diameter

2018

acrylic inside gold-leafed, debossed frame, handmade velvet box, hand-folded paper star with gold-plated headpins

This work combines the disciplines of painting and paper-folding for the first time.  Rafaela is part of a series that celebrates the rebirth of a new world soul, named Peregrine White, a reincarnation of the first child born on the Mayflower when it was anchored in Massachusetts Bay.  In a reinterpretation of the Christ story in the Gospels, Rafaela is a powerful woman who delivers a message to Elizabeth and Elizabeth’s cousin, Josiah.  It is Josiah who will conceive the New Messiah in the poem, a work-in-progress, titled “The Annals of Peregrine White.”  Please scroll down to the painting, “Unto Us a Child is Born,” and also refer to “A Foreboding in Morona” in the Early Work section.  Thus far, “The Annals of Peregrine White” consists of two quatrains, which follow.  “Born of two gentlemen from Morona— / Apocryphal land where the sun seared the Flood— / Leapfrogging, maladjusted Peregrine White, / You’re the everlasting covenant; the blood of our blood. // Once, winds tagged the angel, Rafaela, with a star; / And Elizabeth deciphered its call to Josiah— / The two cousins would visit in the time of mayflowers, / Courted by whispers he would bear the Messiah.”