Based in Chicago, artist Harmonia Rosales’ inspiration arises from living life as a woman of colour, she describes her art as being born out of “a combination of my love for history, thirst for endless new knowledge, and dedication to social action.”I have been following her work online for a while (@Honeiee), falling in love with her incredible version, reimagining the classic Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam.

Rosales says she grew up loving classic paintings such as Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam,” on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and whilst I grew up attending churches, the angels and saints looked nothing like me. Seeing your likeness in the divine and spiritual is important, which is why work like this is crucial. When she painted God as a black woman a lot of people got mad, but I believe that it is very easy to be offended if you’ve never lacked representation. In an interview with the Huffington Post, she said “We have been taught that God created ‘man’ in his own image. In fact, we have created God in our own image. So ‘God’ is whoever we want God to be, a representation of the ideal, of the divine, of wisdom and love and pure creativity.”

The beautiful oil-on-canvas painting in question took two months to create replaces white male figures that represent Jesus, God and angels with black women. Thank you Harmonia for these strokes of genius! To keep up with updates, you can subscribe to her mailing list at harmoniarosales.com.