“Black Madonna: Divinity” Commission Was a Spiritual Journey
Commissioned by a private collector as a graduation gift, Black Madonna: Divinity celebrates and commemorates her stepping fully into her Black Quaker faith as a minister. This mixed-media collage, created on navy blue Canson paper, reflects not just her spiritual journey but the cultural and ancestral iconography that grounds it.
The piece draws inspiration from “Respite of the Black Madonnas”, the first work in my Moonlight series, while forging its own path through deliberate symbolism. The central figure is surrounded by hand-painted sunflowers, syngoniums, and orchids, that are both decorative and devotional. Each was chosen for the minister’s personal connection and layered with meaning: sunflowers for faith and resilience, syngoniums for transformation, and orchids for beauty and strength.
Three rings of braided hair crown the Madonna’s head, each ring embedded with copper embellishments. In African traditions, copper is a conduit between the spiritual and material worlds, a transmitter of energy. The braids, formed in three interlocking circles, speak directly to the principle of Ujima, which means collective work and responsibility, and the idea that through community, we build something sacred and sustaining.
Her robe, painted in shades of black and teal, is collared in gold and mirror silver — two metals long associated with ancestral healing and spiritual reflection. Gold calls forth clarity and divine protection. Mirror silver doesn’t just reflect light; it reflects the viewer, inviting them into the piece, implicating them in the sacred gaze.
At the center of the composition rests a bronze ankh, the key of life, grounding the work in another layer of meaning. Cast in the color of divinity, the ankh closes the circle initiated by Ujima: life sustained through collective purpose, reverence, and care.
This was a commission rooted in real-life purpose: marking a turning point in the client's spiritual leadership and a new chapter rooted in Black faith tradition. Our conversations were about more than color and form. They were about belief, ancestry, and intention.
Black Madonna: Divinity now lives in the home of the minister it honors.
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