Print Details:

• Museum-quality posters made on thick, durable, matte paper.
• Paper is archival and acid-free.
• Unframed prints arrive rolled up in a protective tube.

Frame Details:

• Alder, Semi-hardwood frame
• Black in color
• .75” thick
• Acrylite front protector
• Lightweight
• Hanging hardware included
• Made in the USA

From the Artist:

"When I experience someone else’s grief, I want to fix it. I want to piece them back together and paint a bright, hopeful picture that absorbs all of their pain and tears. I had to fight this desire while drawing this image. I drew layer upon layer of imagery of tears, yelling, conflict, and menacing crowds of people, and all I wanted to do was sprinkle imagery of God’s presence and love throughout the piece. I kept wanting to add God’s hand in this drawing. I found myself longing to add some semblance of light or relief for the psalmist, but for some reason I stopped myself.

I think I stifled this desire for most of the drawing process because, when I’m experiencing grief myself, I just want someone to sit with me in the unresolved, jarring, unsettling space of it all. I  want someone to acknowledge and see the wrongness, the ugliness of grief—to see my shattered self and situation for what it is and not try to tape it back together for just a little while. God never, ever leaves us, but in those profoundly shattered moments, it really feels like God is nowhere to be found. Sometimes we need to sit in that feeling for a bit to remember why we need the shining face of God so desperately.

As I drew layer after layer, I had to sit in brokenness with the psalmist and experience the repetitive painful sting of the vivid imagery the psalmist provides. Once I reached the outer layer, I decided to add breaks in the mandala that start on the very outside with light bursts of yellow and orange and reach through the traumatic imagery to a thin yellow circle that holds the psalmist in the middle. The yellow light also completes the outside of the mandala and holds all of the imagery. I wanted the light to be subtle to create space for the imagery to breathe, and for these breaks to represent God’s light holding the psalmist through it all. What resulted is an overall flower shape that I wasn’t expecting. I think the lesson in all of this is that if we allow ourselves to grieve before God, to really open ourselves up to the difficult inner work that takes, then that’s where true and profound growth happens. The overall imagery is almost entirely transformed by God’s light breaking in, and the broken vessel of the psalmist in the middle becomes the seed and center of a blooming flower."
—Lauren Wright Pittman