Beauty for Bagdad

This is a painting I did in 2008 for the Lighthouse chapel in Iraq. Read the following for the whole story of how this came about:

I decided to feature my husband Roger's art work in this post. He is a stained glass artist. He took it up as a hobby 6 years ago and has completed over 70 stained glass windows or panels in that time. I assist him on some projects with the design element of the work and also color selection. Here is a project we worked on together in 2008. In July of that year our younger son Brian was deployed to Iraq for the second time. After being there a few days he called us and told us about the new chapel on the base. When he had been there before the chapel met in a tent and now they had a building. He said it was very stark and "vanilla". He suggested we build some stained glass panels and that I send some paintings to help decorate the chapel. After much consultation with a chaplain's assistant via email we came up with the subject matter of the panels which consisted of a butterfly, dove & rainbow, a lily and a lighthouse. Thee stories were published about this project,one in the Arizona Daily Star, one in the Suncity Tipster and one in the Oro Valley Magazine. Here is my husband Roger and myself with three of the stained glass panels before they were shipped to Iraq. The fourth one is in the photo below. Each of the above windows were installed in a cabinet the same as the one in the following photo.

This photo was taken at the dedication of the stained glass panels. Notice the beautiful cabinet that was built by a young airman to showcase the panel. Our son Brian is on the right and the Chaplain is on the left. Brian came home just a few days after the dedication. He retired from the Air Force with 26 years of service a year ago.