It was 11pm and I was just getting started. As my mind flipped from thought to thought, image to image, it rested on something that I have wanted to do for awhile, moved on, then came back. "Every artist should make at least one Pietà," one of my professors had told us last semester. One of my closest friends did, in the course of that class, and it was a beautiful, terrible, wonderful thing to see. From that time on I have wanted to make my own, to work through that image with my heart, my hands and my medium: paint.
In looking for information about Pietà (plural), I learned a little about the history of these pieces of artwork. Pietà is Italian for pity. These works were used historically as the 13th station in the Stations of the Cross. The image is of Mary Mother of Jesus, cradling the body of the dead Christ, an image of great sorrow. The face of a mother who has watched her son, the Son of promise, die, and the seemingly defeated form of the Christ together are moving beyond words. Typically Pietà are sculptures, but throughout history there have also been a number of paintings done. Many artists have explored the same subject. I wonder what each felt as he depicted the scene?
What does sorrow look like? How are the shoulders held? The head? What is the facial expression?
These were questions I asked as I sat in my closet-studio in the garage, sketchbook laying before me. I had turned on my music a moment before, and the first song that played was one my friend had recently listened to: There is a Fountain.
There is a fountain filled with blood
drawn from Emmanuel's veins
and sinners plunged beneath that flood
loose all their guilty stains
That is why I am doing this right now. Because of this sorrow, I am made clean!
O sacred head now wounded. This became a beautiful experience as I worked through the imagery. Drawing sorrow. Death. Pain. My God! My Savior! How great is Your love for me! The time it took to work through the picture was time that I was able to spend thinking about His great steadfast-love and be thankful.
The painting itself was hard, so hard. I had to work through how to use color, and the nature of watercolor paint to really convey the emotion that I was feeling. I wanted to use blue for Mary for the sake of tradition, but blue also brings to mind sadness. I wanted to emphesize this aspect of it as well as the drippy, watery nature of watercolors, so I added it to Mary's face, shadowing it with blue, allowing the blue to drip like tears, staining her face. Then I came to the Man of Sorrows, Christ, bruised, bleeding, broken. I still am afraid that I did not do a good job on this part. It had been hard in the sketching up to draw a figure that was limp, heavy with the the weight of death, and then to put a face on it...and then to mar that face. "Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our and sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the Lord was laid on him the iniquity of us all." (Isaiah 53:4-6) I used red, of course, allowing the mind to read from the color, applied loosely on the form of the Christ figure, the story of his beautiful blood that was spilled as payment. The story of his beautiful life, given in forfeit.
What can wash away my sins?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus
What can make me whole again?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
O Precious is that flow
that made me white as snow
no other fount I know
Nothing but the blood of Jesus
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