Saint Thomas Sketches

 Saint Thomas the Apostle was an architect. He took money from a king to build him a palace then gave all that money to the poor and told the kind that his palace was built for him in heaven. I think that's called fraud. Struggling with how to represent Saint Thomas because after Caravaggio's Thomas everything else is an also-ran. There is nothing as psychologically charged and aesthetically delicious as sticking your finger into the wound of Christ. I guess that's why he's best known as the Doubter.

Saint Thomas the Apostle was also called Didymus, the twin, Jesus's twin. He was mystically present at the ascension of Mary into heaven and he caught her girdle which she threw down to him as she ascended.

I started out by making a grossly exaggerated version of the investigation of the wound. I felt if one person was crawling through the other, it would give the impression of conjoined twins. Several times I thought I was onto something... but I wasn't

I beat a hasty retreat to the idea of architecture. And faith as an impropable, impossible edifice.
I made a new Thomas lifting these boulders and constructing inspiring, faith-based towers.

That’s okay, but it’s not as densely packed as I would like. I’m missing references to the wound, the doubt, Mary’s ascension, the idea of twins- I’d really like to pack in the symbolism, if possible. So I guess I will keep noodling around with this idea.