Faith’s Dark Side, Capacity to Purify Subjects of Houston Catholic Artist’s Paintings

HOUSTON CHRONICLE | ICONIA
By Menachem Wecker

"Sanctum"

LOUISIANA---Many different faiths have enlisted art as a way to show how belief can improve human behavior. But other times, religion can be dark and frightful, as appears to be the case when one first considers the work of Houston-based painter Sharon Kopriva. Kopriva’s cardinal, for example, whose clothes are tattered, whose eyes are sunken, and whose skin is weathered, recalls one of the artist’s inspirations, Francisco Goya, the 18th century Spanish artist who painted witches and monsters on the walls of his home as an old man. The piece is, like [Francis] Bacon and John Alexander, a ‘take off’ of Pope Innocent X by Velasquez. [link]

Ogden Museum of South Art: "From Terra to Verde: The Work of Sharon Kopriva" (Ends January 13, 2013) on the campus of the University of New Orleans, 925 Camp Street New Orleans, LA.

"From Dust Thou Art" (1997)