In the sketches on this page, Robert works through two metaphors for his painting, The Lavishness of My Feelings. The first metaphor, a woman poised between love and death, comes by way of artist Edvard Munch. The second metaphor makes reference to Georges de la Tour’s painting, Magdalene and the Flame, which draws on the theme of sin and repentance. Robert redraws his woman holding a lighted match. While Robert eventually saves the detail of the lighted match for a separate painting, Flame, he does make the link between the woman in Elizabeth Smart’s adulterous story and Mary Magdalene. In the finished painting, the woman assumes the attitude of an unrepentant Magdalene.