"A Friend Of Mine"

For the first niche painting, I mostly got the idea from a dream: I was painting a niche. I found my niche in a dream. The painter George Kozman had been doing architectural perspectives in landscape often with water reflections, so there was his influence. There is also a great painting in the Cleveland Museum of Art. It is not exactly a new idea. However, few artists have strictly followed the trompe l'oeil rules. This is a statue of Mary Magdeline, painted from a photograph. I made a cardboard niche model to study the light sources and shadows. The overlaping transparent shadows are invented.