I’m embarrassed to say…..

…. that I’ve been working on this piece of work on and off since March 2019 and it’s probably at the worst state it’s been in for a while, so much so that I think I may white wash it and start areas again. I was so pleased with it around June but that’s sometimes the way a painting goes. You lose momentum, you try something new and in the course of one brushstroke you go from a piece of work that is working well to one that has lost all sense of the subject matter.

This started off as a challenge set by my Year 13 class. I was encouraging them to paint with much more freedom, more expressive marks, more concept than refinement…… and in return they challenged me to paint more realistically, and so the gauntlet was picked up, then set down, and picked up again, then set down! But now is the time to pick it up again and get this piece resolved once and for all. The Easter break and the ‘surreal’ness of the current situation could actually provide me with a chunk of time for the first time in 2 years.

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The Catcher

The last few days have been really beautiful. As a family we have spent a lot of time together and it shows. All of a sudden we are listening more and understanding more, kinder even. Yesterday the kids and I copied an idea from a New Wine artist, making a cross from barbed wire. Fitted with gloves and armed with paint brushes I was not only humbled by their concentration and focus but also by their conversation. Both of them know Jesus and love Him. Their matter of fact statements, their faith unfaltering, speaks deeply to me. They trust. They have faith in Him.

I am currently rereading ‘A Beautiful Mess’ by Danielle Strickland and in it she makes this observation….. “The trapeze artists are really only free to take the risks they take if they know the catcher is reliable enough to catch them. It’s the trust in the catcher that enables them to be truly free.” This has resonated with me as it links perfectly with the work I’m doing about stepping out, stepping into. And it has occurred to me today, and it is so blindingly obvious, that the more time you spend with someone, the more you know them and the more you know if you can trust them. Blindingly obvious. It’s the same with so many things: family, marriage, church, friends, Jesus. I’ve been challenged today to look at what I invest my time in. In a moment of solitude on this beautiful day I am once again throwing myself into the arms of the Catcher and listening to His reassuring voice as He nudges me in the right direction.

It is finished.

I submitted the small canvases yesterday for the Shrugborough Hall exhibition which starts on Tuesday. Was really pleased with them but something was missing. They didn’t resonate and I found that frustrating. Then something came to me I was thinking about recently and that was to paint blood red on the top and sides of the canvas. The Passover is celebrated just before Easter and it was for the Israelites to remember their deliverance from the Egyptians recorded in Exodus 12 and 13 of The Bible. “When God sees the blood on the lintel and two door posts, God will pass over the doorway, He won’t let the destroyer enter your house to strike you down with ruin.” This powerful image of saving blood, the Old Testament sacrifice of the lamb, is replaced by the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus crucified, but the image of the lintel and door posts being smeared with blood holds power for me. So I painted the sides and top of the canvases with red and this completed the image for me. I think I will use this again in my art work.

It was a little peculiar leaving the canvases in the dropping off room. I think Greg thought I was a little spaced out because I just hovered for a while. Very strange. Deadlines are such a help to me but to complete the pieces and then to have to relinquish them so quickly was quite peculiar, didn’t quite like it. I didn’t even enter the room with confidence, apologetically almost. I unwrapped them and placed them on the floor ready for him to sort and then waited for nothing in particular, not really even speaking, which I must be careful of!! It’s a strange thing. You make something and live with them sometimes for months, even years, and then you let them go and the next time you see them they are on a wall, in different light, almost not yours any more. It’s a peculiar type of grieving.

Good Friday

Manipulated paper

Last year at Easter time God drew me towards The Passion film by Mel Gibson. I studied the crucifixion during my degree and although it is one of the most explicit films it still does not go far enough in showing the torture and the brutality Jesus endured before and during his death. It is not a film I want to watch but as I watched it God asked me to do to paper what they did to Him: to punch, spit upon and tear at it. The paper was then buried on Good Friday and then dug up on Easter Sunday. The result was a series of pieces of paper, manipulated in such a way that it had softened like skin, was broken like His skin.

Burying paper

I wanted to repeat the process this year using bigger pieces of paper, to revisit this process and to revisit His pain and His sacrifice for us. It catches my breath each time I do this, spitting on the paper, tearing at it as the lashes would have, praying for forgiveness for all that I have done. And the physical act of digging and burying the paper.
The act of reflecting on what Jesus has done for us…. it is so important, to try and grasp what He endured. Thank God for Easter Sunday.