Alongside his didactic paintings, Kurelek was also continuing with his more conventional ones, in the fall of 1964 twenty paintings to honour his father,[REF] and a couple of years later another to honour his mother,[REF] though in the latter he could not restrain sermonizing outright in write-ups for the paintings.
Originally Ukrainian Orthodox, and briefly a professed atheist, Kurelek, converted to the Roman Catholic Church in 1957, by 1959 had started on his St. Matthew's Passion series, 160 paintings on the Passion of Christ [REF].