Many of the iconic subjects I work with are ambiguous in their meaning, and so it's easy to find qualities of the enigmatic in them. But I tried here to address one of the most enigmatic and perplexing subjects: religion. I'm a religious person I suppose, and am fairly comfortable working with the metaphors and rhetoric of my tradition. But that doesn't mean I understand it, at least not in the cognitive/intellectual sense.

I confess I don't really know what the symbols in this painting mean, just that they "feel" somewhat liturgical or mythological in the way that many religious symbols strike me. This is what "enigmatic" means to me; ideas or situations that confound our attempts to understand them with our rational faculties, even though we may be familiar and comfortable with them.

Thanks for reading this far, and for being interested in my thinking behind this picture!