Spirituality

The religious series consist of both the Jesus Series and the Love Series. I set out to contrast my feelings about spirituality against the weight and impact of institutional religion/ spirituality, specifically Christianity.

The Jesus Series (2003-04) consists of six paintings about the traditional Crucifix. They represent my portrayal of Jesus´ last moments before, during, and after his death. Jesus #1 (2003) shows Jesus who, while being speared in the chest, gazes upon his attacker with forgiveness. Jesus #2 (2004) is the portrayal of his death and transcendence while Jesus #3 (2004) reveals the pitfalls of communication and history: the vulnerability of Jesus´ message over time, and in the hands of the successive forces of power and their potentially contradictory moral and ethical values. Whispers (2003), Life (2004) and Metamorphosis (2003) continue these ideas and expand the scope and breadth of them by focussing beyond one symbolic figure and upon the common man.

I consider this series to be contemporary in scope because, like Jesus relying on a true representation of his message, I believe societies are depending more on technology to collect, store and circulate our basic communication, collective memory and recorded history. Who will control this operation will determine first what information will exist in the future and second, the moral and ethical imprint upon the next generations to follow. There is an inherent danger in this process, since those institutions in power will exercise their control. Jesus´ life serves for me as a pregnant moment in our history where a message was distorted: how a vision of love and peace was transformed over a period of time to justify war and persecution. Hence, there developed a lack of people´s trust in organized religion, as well as, in the last hundred years, in governments. Jesus was aware of the misuse of power, that is, the power of controlling and manipulating the “truth”, and thus he championed `leading by example´ and inspired others to trust in their unique capacity to discern the metaphysical.

The direction of my work has changed at the conclusion of this series, especially as I became more and more fascinated in the way “truth” is/was seen and re-presented. I expressed these issues and interests in the recent Jan Series (2004-) and the Five Seasons Series (2004-).