I literally painted this in one day. "Conception of Hope" oil on canvas 4'x3' 2003. It was the day the U.S. went to War. My heart sank again, yet my hope was to make this idea ethereal. So I took this idea from the fact my friend was pregnant with her first child at the time. Since 9/11 was our reasoning for going to war I repeated the chess game from my chalk mural. She is pregnant while we're going to war, her husband shows her the cross as religion shall be her prayers, she instead looks the viewer in the eyes in a questionable way. Will faith help us while others die in the name of War? Yet history has proven religion led many wars. To conceive hope in something we as humans have no power over, I the artist thought if I conceived this art then maybe just maybe mercy would be born.