Collection: Mother's Love

This image of Mary, mother of Jesus, holding her son after His deposition from the cross are fragments, rearranged by this artist from the original marble sculpture piece PIETA by Michelangelo, 1498-1500. It was painted just prior to the death of this artists' mother in honor of the love she lived so beautifully in her life. A mother's love teaches us all how to love in this world. The following excerpt by Dr. Victor Frankl, holocaust survivor, offers this on love:

For a group of men, forced to march to a new camp through winter woes at rifle-point; their thoughts turned to their wives. Stumbling in snow and ice, clinging to each other as stars faded and pink light entered the sky, Victors' mind clung to his wife's image.

"I heard her answering me, saw her smile, " her encouraging look. Real or not, her look was more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise. A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth" that love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire" The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world may still know bliss" in the contemplation of his beloved. In utter desolation" (a) man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment."

A man then stumbled causing others to fall. The guard whipped them back to their feet. Quickly, his thoughts returned to his other-world discussion with his wife, back and forth asking and answering questions. Next, the thought entered of his uncertainty of whether she actually still lived in her camp. At that moment, it ceased to matter. Knowing left unaffected the fact that NOTHING could touch their love and his thoughts of her. If he had known she was dead, he would have given himself just as firmly to contemplate her image; just as vividly and satisfying. Love IS stronger than death.