'According to Your Faith Be It Unto You' 

Curator: What strikes me immediately is the pervasive sense of supplication. The figure kneeling is just so completely open, literally and metaphorically, to whatever is coming her way. Editor: Indeed. What we have here is a painting by John Duncan called, 'According to Your Faith Be It Unto You.' It has some symbolic landscapes too. Curator: That title certainly colors the experience! There's such a strong connection between belief and perception. This image feels less about divine power and more about the power of suggestion and internalized faith. I can imagine the materials used amplify this atmosphere too; what’s been used here? Editor: I believe we are seeing gouache and watercolor here. Both invite translucency, blending, almost an ethereal quality—perhaps the artist favored these malleable media precisely to evoke such inner worlds. And looking closer, the labor involved to create such smooth gradients of color cannot be overstated. It required hours to realize the forms. Curator: It feels intimate. Not loud or didactic, but quiet and internal. Are we witnessing a moment of blessing or… something more psychological? Is that kneeling woman being offered a gift, or being molded by her own expectations? Editor: It is tempting to ponder what role gender and labour might have played in the scene of blessing shown here. I can almost feel the tension in her fingers! What strikes me is the figure’s white robes; such painstaking rendering implies time spent. I find that very fascinating when considering its theme around beliefs. Curator: The more I look, the more dreamlike it seems. And dreams, of course, are just projections of our inner lives, painted with the colors of our hopes and fears. Editor: That’s a very generous reading. What are your parting thoughts? Curator: I like its openness. It invites me to project my own narratives, to kneel alongside that woman, and to wonder what it is that I truly believe. And how those beliefs might be shaping my world. Editor: And for me, it’s that dedication of time, that investment of hours into crafting something so seemingly simple, that makes me consider just how valued art, or belief for that matter, should be in the grand scheme of things.