Primitive Stories

In my journey to paint, I have found that the stories of faith to be an important place to begin. The problem for me is that the images of these stories have been so often made and manipulated that I they have lost their power for me. The image of Jesus praying on in the garden, with perfect hair and pious gesture on the eve of his death is the ultimate sanitized surrender to meaning in faith paintings. At such a point it is simple decoration style and no meaning nor engagement. Along with the vast tidal wave of images made of the biblical stories I have found a phenomenal lack of awareness of these stories in our life now. What was the defining stories of our culture and society are now historical, academic and quaint shadows of another time. So for me the journey back to the stories of my faith and where I find my meaning leads me to a very primal or primitive expression. This began with a picture of the crucifixion, a key entry point of Christian faith. At a time when I was drinking much in college, I found that the fake wood knots that were formed into the table tops made for great face images and using them as a backdrop I went into the place of pain and loss in my own life and found the companionship of Jesus. The direct and spattered expression of someone being literally splattered on the cross is what came out. What surprised me was a friend’s reaction, it was not of the primitive nature, but the fact that the image of Jesus was black. The racial dimension of Jesus had never been a thought to me, and it struck me that perhaps all the images I had grown up with were caucasian, like me. He had trouble with seeing Jesus as being black. I had no thought in this as being any racial statement at all. This unintended consequence made me aware that by going into a more emotional and primal place in my expression was also an entryway into unmasking my own and perhaps others limitations placed on our faith by the limited and very controlled expressions of the stories of our faith.