Featured Artwork: Whatsoever You Do

A friend wanted her own set of paintings of the mysteries of the rosary, the life and times of Jesus and his mother Mary, and some of my friend’s favorite Bible verses. She wanted a loose style, no hard details, something more Impressionistic. As she described, I visualized in watercolor.

Here is the illustration for “whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me,” Matthew 25:40. For her preference as well as the abstraction that I visualized I kept the clothing kind of the loose traditional garment seen in paintings from the era Jesus lived. Of course, the people are abstracted, no real features, all kinds of colors and shapes and headwear, and maybe they are dancing on a cloud.

And I gave myself another challenge in these paintings—no sketches, no drawings, I wanted to work with a wet brush and color right from my visualization onto the paper, with no judgement or conscious decision, and let intuition guide my hand. It was an exhilarating exercise for me, and my friend is very pleased.

I don’t profess to any religion but learning about all religions and spirituality in our lives has been a lifelong study. My friend is Unitarian. I attended Catholic grade school, but learned much more about Catholicism and religion in general through the years as an adult. In studying the history of the English language in college we used the Bible because it’s been translated into so many forms of English, even taking it back to Latin. I always had my own visualizations of what I read and heard.

Who am I to judge? From Pope Francis’s remarks about people who were LGBT or Q, “If someone is gay and is searching for the Lord and has good will, then who am I to judge him?” In 2013, very early in his 12 years as pope, he set the theme for his idea of what could be done to help people, individuals, all over the world, in many, many ways. Some thought this didn’t go far enough, others thought it went too far, but he went as far as the doctrine could go and reminded the world that Jesus spent his life among the individual human beings who were forgotten, downtrodden and cast out, especially immigrants, so it was the responsibility of all Christians to do the same.

As I mentioned above I went to Catholic grade school, and that was mostly in the years before Vatican II and the mass was still in Latin and I had no idea what was going on or what anyone was saying. My parents didn’t go to church so I couldn’t ask them and questions in school or church were not welcomed, or answered. Seeing a pope who reached out and communicated as clearly as he could was not going to be popular, but I think literally and figuratively spoke to many people wavering on the edge of Catholicism.

But he was also just a good person, he had the “good will” he mentioned in others, humble and accepting, concerned about the environment, war, disease, anything that endangered the people of this planet, reminding us about acceptance and forgiveness. And love. He was hard to resist.

That’s why I featured the painting above today and with remembering him instead of the painting in this set that is the traditional Easter art, below. That he would die the day after Easter, the most important ritual in Christian faith, almost made him seem saintly, but I still connect him with the verse from Matthew.

I had originally intended for Jesus' figure to be a blended flow of colors, but once I had all the colors in place and was about to blend, I saw figures in the shapes the colors had made and suddenly I couldn't blend them. Diversity is part of the visualization in all of these paintings, The idea of His figure made of different individuals was too exciting to change. I visualized doves, and the archangel, and lots of light.

I had explained my techniques for these paintings in the copy above, and I’ll add that letting myself work in this loose and unplanned way right from the visualization that was only in my head was exciting. And I’m a little surprised it worked out the way I hoped, and I produced a good painting instead of the watercolor mud I thought might happen.

Of course, the friend who commissioned me has the originals, but I do have prints of these paintings. While my websites are still offline, please ask if you are interested in prints or merchandise.

I hope you enjoy my featured artwork posts where I review one of my (usually favorite) paintings including a discussion of inspiration and place if appropriate, medium, style, preparations and creation, for those who are curious and for those who are learning.