Back in May 2012 I figured with all the energy spent looking at painters, I should pick up painting. This was one of my early attempts for my buddy Jacob; I aimed at a chronological study of painting, and first went for the tedious techniques of the Flemish. My wife and I were going to have our first child in December, and in preparing for the mental state of parenthood, we found taboos against breast feeding absurd.

This painting was an homage to an old print my mom had of the Virgin Mary nursing lil baby Jesus in public, by Leonardo Da Vinci. How absurd, I thought, that in modern times people would throw shade at her for such an act, and that in America at least, such shaming tends to come from the more conservative branches of the religious Christian right.