Patri­cia Henderson

Patri­cia Hen­der­son resides in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia. Retired from a med­ical career, she now enjoys her art, espe­cially oil paint­ing, in a much more relaxed and peace­ful atmosphere.

This por­trait of St. Therese was painted as a birth­day gift for Peter Kloster­mann, who lives in Bel­gium. Their mutual and deep love for St. Therese was the moti­va­tion for this painting.

Asked about the surge of inter­est and admi­ra­tion for her paint­ing, Patri­cia says, “I never dreamed that this por­trait of our pre­cious St. Therese would ever be more than a sim­ple birth­day gift for a dear friend.”

She adds, “I know now, with the way peo­ple are moved by it and ask­ing for it, we would both love to share her beau­ti­ful and angelic image with the rest of the world”.

Asked if this will be her only paint­ing, she replied, “I can’t stop now, I have the energy and time to do more and I have the desire charged with the love of my sub­jects. So far, I have fin­ished my ver­sion of Jesus, The Divine Mercy; I am paint­ing a new image of St. Faustina and as of right now, I have plans to paint St. Pio, Mother Teresa, Pope John Paul II, Our blessed Mother Mary, St. Joseph, St. Jude Thad­deus and, I am sure, more when these are fin­ished, God willing.”

“I’d like to men­tion a very inter­est­ing event that hap­pened while I was paint­ing St. Faustina. This gave me extra moti­va­tion to con­tinue my work; I was so awe struck that I would like to share it with you. A very nice man who lives in my neigh­bor­hood, (I’m assum­ing, since I have seen him sev­eral times pass by my house) stopped by look­ing for a job (mow­ing and weed­ing) for his grand­son. He noticed paint on me (as I often live in my work) and he asked about it. I told him I was paint­ing St. Faustina and he wanted to see it, so I showed him. He liked it a lot and told me he was a “lazy” Catholic; sel­dom had gone to church in years. I invited him to see one of the prints of St. Therese and he was absolutely blown away. He sat down at my kitchen table with the paint­ing before him and I could see tears in his gen­tle eyes. He said he prayed to her for help the day one of his chil­dren was born because his lit­tle girl was very sick and he was so dis­traught. It had some­thing to do with her res­pi­ra­tory sys­tem. Any­way, he is sure she answered his prayer. Two days later the doc­tor told them that the child was doing very well, with no fur­ther breath­ing prob­lems. He then said, look­ing at her pic­ture at that point, that it made him feel ashamed that he had aban­doned his religion.

I told him that every­one is wel­come back to the church; that our God is a lov­ing and mer­ci­ful God and no mat­ter what we have done, he loves us with­out remem­ber­ing our sins; as though they never hap­pened and for­gives us as though we were his only child. I was so choked up I could barely speak to him. He got to his feet and told me he was going straight to St. John’s and talk to the priest. How excit­ing it was for me to know of his plans because I had ded­i­cated my paint­ing of St. Therese to the con­ver­sion and recon­ver­sion of peo­ple to the church and here was another exam­ple; she had picked another rose for her Heav­enly Father. Thank you, St. Therese.”

“I will con­tinue paint­ing until I can no longer do it because I think it’s ben­e­fi­cial for the world to have images of spir­i­tual exem­plars to remind them of their faith and devo­tion on the road home to our great and awe­some God.”