Lux perpetua luceat eis — let perpetual light shine upon them. The phrase comes from the Requiem, and it gives this first collection its name.

Lux Perpetua is a collection of watercolor paintings of four parish altars in the Diocese of Charlotte, each one painted at the instant of the Elevation — the moment the Host is raised in adoration, the room caught between candlelight and shadow. Each painting corresponds to a different season of the traditional liturgical calendar, so the four works move through a full year of light: the beauty of Christmastide, the starkness of Lent, the white of Easter, the fire of Pentecost.

These four parishes share something else. In recent years, each was affected by a time of significant liturgical changes placed on the Traditional Latin Mass. Lux Perpetua, a reflection on the ancient liturgy, is simply an act of looking closely at something worth looking at — at altars where that Mass was offered, at a moment in the liturgy that has been offered the same way for centuries, regardless of what was happening around it.

These paintings also serve as a quiet reflection on the inseparable bond between worship and belief. They invite the viewer to consider that the Church’s liturgical traditions are not merely inherited customs but living expressions of the faith that have shaped generations of Catholics. As the way we pray influences the way we believe, the preservation and contemplation of these sacred forms becomes an act of remembering the theological and spiritual heritage they embody.

Watercolor felt like the perfect medium for this. Its transparency allows light to emerge through layers of color, its pigment pooling into shadow and only fully revealing itself where the shadows end and light breaks through — which is, in its own small way, exactly what these paintings are about. Each painting becomes less a record of a place and more a meditation on what that place meant.