This is a painting I completed a few months ago entitled Can these bones live...? which I exhibited at the Mars Hill Graduate School exhibit. It's 8 feet tall and about 4 feet wide. However, tonight we're helping lead a Tenebrae service (which means 'darkness' in Latin) and it is a 'celebration' of what has traditionally been called 'good' Friday in the church calendar. A more accurate name is probably 'dark' Friday given we're remembering and seeking to identify as much as possible with the suffering and death of Jesus.
I will be taking this work above and somehow painting over it with 'darkness' in a live painting experiment. At first I wasn't sure if I should do that, given the 'sacredness' of works of art, but I thought again that it seems almost more fitting for this day that I work with a piece already constructed and composed...an image, perhaps, in need of a fitting iconoclasm. It makes me nervous just thinking about it, but it makes perhaps a more profound and troubling statement.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me a sinner...
