Titled after a line from William Blake’s poem “London”, this piece expresses the faults we carry despite being holy people. The halo on the self-portrait symbolizes the time I have spent in the church and my efforts to be Christlike. However, like all people, that is skewed by sin and human elements in us. In Blake’s poem, this line describes the chimney soot of London coating the church steeples. This poem seemed fitting to base a painting on as it was one of the first paintings I completed in New York City, which could just as easily be described by Blake’s poem.