I searched out this painting in the thrill of seeing Bernini's angels in Rome. The angel suffers a bit from Greek influence in the sculpture I used as a model, (a plaster nymph) instead of the grand and muscular baroque angels of Bernini -- yet it has the wings of the Nike of Samothrace and who couldn't thrill to those? The banner in the foreground paraphrases one of Bernini's -- and Christ's, in Latin -- though I added "Ego" and it is not in the original inscription, nor needed. I think the "broken-ness" of my joyful use of the Latin inscription reflects the motive of this painting -- expressing in an image the search for the joy of God in visual terms -- everywhere one can find it -- in St. Peter's in Rome, in Bernini's sculptures, in an artist's memory of the beauty of Latin, its brevity, economy, poetry. It also expresses an ordinary, middle-income American's chance at education, love of learning, freely expressed religious faith, and travel to the world's beautiful places, both old and new