JESUS CHRIST on the CROSS

For this painting, the artist used brushes, palette knives and paint rollers. Knives and rollers confer abstraction. The idea is to invite the viewer to part with materiality, enter the realm of emotion and faith.

The backdrop is blurred. The crucified body is taken out of its temporal context.

The focus is brought on suffering and agony. The torments Jesus Christ, the embodiment of humanity, endured. The seering pain of the torn, pierced, lacerated flesh which, ultimately, must have overshadowed the crushing feeling of abandonment.

 

The spear is suggested here by a straight, single stroke.

 

The colour of the flesh verges on the grey, with here and there the remnants of brighter hues, suggesting the imminent departing of life from the body.

 

The red contrasts sharply with duller shades. The impact on the eye is strong. On the eye and on the soul.

 

Paradoxically, sensuality is also dominant in this painting. Flesh is omnipresent. Flesh is not just prone to corruption. It is the siege of physical pain... and desire.

 

This painting sparks off sincere, genuine devotion. Yet it also arouses feelings of a reprehensible secular nature. It is underlayed, or rather threaded, laced, with worldly fibre. Which is how Christ should be perceived.

For two thousand years the great thinkers within the Christian Church have been debating Christ's double nature. Some maintained Jesus was a mere human being. Others that he was utterly divine in essence. A consensus has been reached that proposes some sort of duality.

This painting seeks to reflect that.