Medicine Man in Meditation

48”x36” Oil on Canvas

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This piece reimagines Caravaggio's St. Jerome in Meditation, replacing the Saint with a Native Medicine Man deep in quiet reflection. St. Jerome is known for translating the Bible into Latin, but this version is imagined as an oral storyteller, and perhaps even an artist who etched petroglyphs to maintain tradition. The human skull is exchanged for a bison skull, and the halo above him gains four prongs echoing the sun symbol — Catholic iconography and Native spirituality held side by side, each intact, each honored. Rather than choosing one tradition over the other, the painting sits in the space where they meet: two paths of wisdom, two ways of seeking the sacred, drawn together in a single act of contemplation. The result is not a replacement of one belief system by another, but a quiet dialogue between them — a reminder that reverence takes many forms, and that stillness, meditation, and the search for meaning are universal across cultures.