As I was painting this image, I kept hearing the choral section of Ode to Joy from Beethoven’s beautiful Ninth Symphony, in my head. It seemed like the perfect aural match to my canvas of a woman expressing pure exaltation as rays of light bath her from a dome above. Even the building that this image depicts, the Pantheon in Paris, was built during the epoch of Beethoven’s life. The music, the building and the woman’s joyous rapture created a perfect serendipity to entitle this piece “Ode to Joy”.- Chris Dellorco
