St. Catherine lived in Siena during the height of the Bubonic Plague and the Great Schism of the West, where rival popes in Avignon and Rome threatened to tear the church apart. St. Catherine, a true servant of God, placed herself right in the middle of both these calamities: she wrote fastidious letters to each of the factions of the Church, beseeching for reconciliation, and for those afflicted with the plague, she rushed toward them to give them love and to minister to them.
I wanted her choice to love to be the focus of this drawing. What makes Catherine a saint is not her fearlessness, but her courage. She witnessed true horror and felt true fear, and she still chose to act against such fear and embrace the lowly ones, kissing their wounds and lifting them up as the Beloved of God. I wanted the look on her face to reflect the reality of her horror, if only to heighten the love and courage by which she chose to live. In a time when everyone lived by fight or flight, St. Catherine chose the way of Christ: the way of love. She did not die as a martyr in the traditional sense, but she gave up her rights to stand in defiance of corruption in the church and she gave up her health in order to show the most wretched ones the unfailing love of God. She died at the age 33.

She is known for writing 6 dialogues that address how one’s soul may be joined up with God, which is known as the mystical marriage. She herself received a wedding band from Christ in one of many ecstatic visions, and she was also known to have received the stigmata. As the patron saint of Italy, I modeled certain textures in her robes topographically to show her connection to the land. The inspiration for her face and posture come from many sources throughout art history, but most notably, Francesco Messina’s sculpture in Rome and Tiepolo’s portrait.
 
St. Catherine is a wonderful example of what happens when we can lay aside fear and each be the one whom God made us to be—we will set the world on fire!