ORIGINAL CHRISTIAN OIL PAINTINGS

Interpretation of the painting: This painting is correctly viewed from the view point that I have spiritually died to this world and am born again to a new reality, which is a life in Jesus Christ.

Background: This image proved to be one of my more elusive images. When I was called to paint this image, I thought it was going to be rather straight forward. I made too many assumptions. I thought when I saw God I was going to be over the moon. There was going to be a great rejoicing in heaven. There was a reason that I had been called to paint this image.

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The journey: To understand this image one must try to look through the eyes of Christ. There is an old medieval saying; your soul is like a pond of water and you are at the bottom of it. If your soul is restless it causes a disturbance on the surface and you can not see clearly. So when you look at Christ and your soul is disturbed then you don’t get the real image of who Christ is. This was my undoing. My soul was disturbed and I did not see clearly. My pride got in the way. I thought I knew the answer. I put together the image with the golden spiral design that was the clothes of God. The golden spiral is a divine pattern found in all of creation. This design represents to me that all of creation is the garments that God wears so that we can see him. For his creation is the only thing we can see.

I then took the pictorial representation of the ‘Shroud of Turin’ and used that as a basis upon which I would make my own rendition. I used the shroud as it was the closest image of Christ that we have. Christ is the only visible representation of God that we have. The only thing that I changed was that I made Jesus have a smiling face, because he was happy.

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The meaning of the painting: I don’t often get this far and then find that my own sin has effected the meaning of the image. I painted the image and decided that something just did not seem right. I was painting to the Glory of God. Visually this image seemed to fit the bill. However, something did not seem right.

I went back into prayer and asked for clarity of what I had done wrong. I said to God that surely when I get to heaven I will see him smiling back at me. With a saddened heart I spent time with our saviour and indulged myself in his peace and tranquillity that he offers all of us. It was then revealed to me, that all the saints before me had seen a glimpse of God that had spurred them into a deeper relationship of self sacrifice and deeper prayer. It hit me like a bolt of lightning; we did not have to wait to die to this world to see God. When we see him whilst we are on this earth we will see his suffering. It will be so compelling that it will impel us to take up our cross and suffer with him to bring more people into his peace.

So while he is still clothed with all of creation (which is suffering the ravages of our sin) it is a sorrowful Christ that we will see when our souls are stilled. We will see very clearly the enormous sacrifice that he has made for us. We will take up his invitation to pick up our cross and to follow him. So I gave him a sorrowful and distorted face, with bloodshot eyes, to express the agony of Our Lord and Saviour. Just to come face to face with God will instil in us just how blessed we truly are.

It was only then that the image seemed right and reflected the scripture the way it has been revealed to me by the Holy Spirit.