Mother Athlete

Mother Athlete is my modern-day Madonna.

The painting depicts Italian speed skater Francesca Lollobrigida after winning Olympic gold at the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Games, holding her son with the Italian flag wrapped around them. The moment stayed with me because there was something about seeing an elite athlete immediately return to the role of mother that felt bigger than a sports victory. It was a picture of two parts of a woman existing at the same time: the woman who has worked, trained, sacrificed, competed, and achieved something extraordinary, and the mother who is simply holding her child.

Behind them is a golden circle. At first glance it reflects the gold medal she has just won, but it also references the golden halos we see around the heads of Mary and the saints in religious paintings. I wanted to take that familiar religious image and place it around a contemporary woman.

For centuries, paintings of the Madonna have celebrated motherhood as something sacred. I wanted to ask what happens when we place a modern mother inside that same visual language, not as a passive figure but as an athlete, competitor, achiever, and woman who has pursued something extraordinary while also raising a child.

Motherhood doesn't erase the woman who existed before it.

If anything, I think it reveals more of her.

Mother Athlete is a celebration of women who carry more than one identity. The athlete and the mother. The ambitious woman and the nurturing one. The woman who gives and the woman who strives. The sacred and the ordinary.

Francesca's Olympic moment gave me the image, but the painting is ultimately about something much larger: the many ways women create meaningful lives while carrying more than one calling at once.