Salvation: A Tale of Three Paintings and Counting

SALVATION

“Prayers help souls. Once trapped in the halls of purgatory, doomed to eternal damnation, she is saved. The angels accompany her, with her wings ready to be worn. The door opens toward heaven.”

Long before the pandemic started, I had this very vague idea about what I wanted to draw: a girl who is chained in purgatory. Other ideas include angels. Another one has her reaching up to the sky. Many variations came to mind while imagining. But the real problem was how to actually paint it.

The first attempt, I did in a half-sized watercolor paper. That’s about 6 x 9, so it’s pretty small. I did it a little too chaotically, with me not knowing how to draw properly a girl who’s kneeling. I didn’t even know how to draw her profile. I finished her drawing with watercolor pencils, which what I had about three years ago. It was also what I had been using since high school.

Since then, I thought I would be satisfied with what I had drawn, even including her in a set of oracle cards, which I had entitled, ‘The Lady Guardian Oracle’. Her card was then named ‘Torment’.

I thought then too that it was fitting, because she was being judged in purgatory first, with her foot chained, so she couldn’t leave. She’s looking morosely at her hands, probably thinking about how she had dirtied them when she was alive. Or maybe thinking about the things she had done wrong, and how she could possibly correct them now.

I left that for a while, but the urge to draw the same thing again came.

It was the start, maybe several months into the pandemic when I did. I had to order my first set of gouache set online, because I thought that would make me a better artist. Because I do think that way sometimes.

I had already started with watercolor, and had practiced all throughout the quarantine period. So I thought, hey, what if I drew her again?

I used a bigger paper now, because I thought it was better if it were bigger. I wanted to include the details I didn’t have the chance to draw before: the door, the feathers, her hand reaching toward heaven.

My first painting of her had fire in it, but I covered it up because I thought that was too much. Too much in the sense that it was perhaps too heavy with meaning. Turns out that it was one of the most important aspects of the painting after all.

So I included it this time, but still vaguely. Because first, I didn’t know how to draw the fire, although I knew the principle of its colors. So I just made it orange at the bottom, to allude that they were this close to hell.

The girls would be reaching for the doors toward heaven, which had just opened, or maybe it was already closing, depending on who would want to interpret.

The girl in the center still has her foot chained toward hell, maybe because she had sinned too much, too many. She would be reaching out toward the door, pertaining to her redemption. She would be with other girls, and they would all desperately reach out for salvation.

The way I named the painting after, I thought of two things: first was the optimistic side, ‘Redemption’. I wanted them first to be saved, to be taken in by God, for their willingness to change for the better, for the prayers told for them.

The second name I had thought was ‘Quo vadis, Domine?’ a line said by St. Peter as he was fleeing persecution. During this, he had met with the risen Christ, who told him he will return to Rome to be crucified again. As he was told this, St. Peter understood what Christ meant: to go back to Rome and continue his work, and offer his life.

With this in mind, I took the line as the name for the painting. But in my version, the girls would be asking the Lord where He is going. And that they would be left in purgatory to further atone for their sins until the right time has come for them to be saved.

I left the painting again, and thought I was satisfied, but come 2022, I had began painting with acrylics. I still do my artworks with watercolor and gouache most of the time, but I had slowly began to incorporate other mediums in my craft too.

I visited my previous works of this theme and thought, I should probably remake it. Because apparently, I can never be satisfied with them.

Come 2023, I bought my first canvas, which I had been planning since day one of painting. With the intent of redrawing my past works, I started with this. Now, with an idea of the girl from the previous works being saved, I thought she should be accompanied by angels. They would be holding feathers for her own pair of wings. Her chains would be broken.

She is saved.

But there would always be the fire, now painted on the bottom, for the allusion that she had almost been tricked by the devil. But she had chosen redemption. She had chosen the better side. Most importantly, the prayers have done their magic. The Lord has heard their plea, and she had been forgiven.

Now that being said, would I still be redoing her piece? Probably. Not because I’m not satisfied with the outcome, but perhaps because I want to draw something that will continue her story.