“While traveling in India I climbed a very tall unsafe ladder and entered an ancient meditation and prayer space carved into a hudge rock centuries ago. Inside was a stone water basin and the walls were covered with the original sacred paintings covered by and commingled with graffiti and drawings and writings accumulated for hundreds of years one on top of the next. At one time there would have been an oil lamp burning during prayer. In my painting a contemporary figure is searching, as humans have throughout time, for grace. She is surrounded by the paintings and drawings and scratches of conflicting human ideas that envelope her as they often do our lives today.”  - John Rowe