Saint Thérèse of Lisieux

To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure where I was trying to go with this picture. However, I drew it anyway because:

a – I very much like the window design,

b – I thought the statute goes well below the window,

c – I thought it might be fun to try out a halo effect!

The window and the statue are both to be found in the recently revamped Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. The halo is not – or at least there was no visible halo when I was looking around the cathedral!

I’m not terribly well up on my saints, but the internet tells me this statue is of Sainte Thérèse de Lisieux, who lived and died (quite young) at the end of the 19th century. Whilst many saints seem to be well known for one or two big holy things they have done, Thérèse’s thing seems to have been doing many small devotional actions on a daily basis – which sounds easier but probably wasn’t!

As far as the composition of the picture is concerned, the window seems to dominate the statue, probably because it is bigger and has much brighter colours. However, the addition of a halo that surrounds the whole statue (rather than just the head, as I had originally and rather unimaginatively conceived it) seems to overcome that problem quite nicely …