THE GLORIOUS MYSTERIES: ASCENSION
Oil on cradled canvas
4.5’ x 6’
November 10 – 30, 2020
This is Painting #19 for Maryhill School of Theology.
I deliberately omitted the five wounds on the body of Christ. I believe that we resurrect with whole and healthy bodies—otherwise the blind would resurrect as blind, the maimed would resurrect as maimed, and the brain-damaged would resurrect as brain-damaged. Besides, it is possible that early painters, especially during the Renaissance period, depicted the resurrected Christ with five wounds to distinguish him from pagan subjects such as Apollo, Dionysos, and Ganymede, which were still popular at the time alongside those with scenes from the life of Christ commissioned by the likes of the Medicis. (Note, as a matter of fact, while looking at the painting, that the figure could very well be that of Apollo, Dionysos, or Ganymede.)
In this painting, the Jewish merkabah is superimposed on the ascending Christ as a modern touch; its practitioners claim that the enraptured shall ascend—body, soul, and spirit—to heaven in star-shaped vessels of light.
We are still within the pandemic period and I continue to refuse to admit outsiders and models into our house. Jazz sat for the figure of Christ--all of my figures of Christ are proportioned to eight heads while all other figures, to seven heads--as he did for the figure of Christ in Feast of Tents.
This was the auditory stimulus I used while making this painting. Do listen to it while viewing the work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRMf3wKBCPo