While most, perhaps all, of my other depictions of the Virgin of Guadalupe portray her as a real woman, I wanted here to show her as the Mother who watches over us as we sleep: Our Celestial Mother.

It was natural to turn thestars of her cloak into those which define the zodiacal constellations, as she draws back the curtain of the daytime sky to reveal the twilit onset of nightfall.

The face is that of a lovely young woman I met as she tended her family's puesto in the marketplace of Teotitlan del Valle, in Oaxaca.

Nuestra Madre Celestial

by J Michael Walker, 2007 Color pencil on paper, 38" high x 50" wide