It seems to me that a man like our St. Anthony, with his self-inflicted mortification of the flesh, would be most crushingly tempted by sexual desires and, more particularly, the vision of woman in all her voluptuous aspects.

It is this phase which I have tried to depict in my painting. St. Anthony, alone in the desert, struggles against his visions; half-formed, moving in indolent suggestion, colored with the beautiful colors of sex, his desires take shape even in the folds of his own wind-tossed robes.

     –“Statement.” Bel Ami International Art Competition and Exhibition of Paintings by Eleven American and European Artists. Exhibition brochure.   Washington, D.C.: The American Federation of Arts, Barr Building, 1946, p. 28.