Station XIII - The Lamentation

2001
acrylic on loose canvas
64" x 74"

I painted this just after my mother died. It was very poignant for me, after beholding my dead mother, to paint my mother in Christ holding her dead son. This painting was part of my mourning. Before I proceeded to paint the other stations of the cross, I originally called this painting, "My mother holding her dead God," which, for me, expressed the utter desolation and abandonment of death.  

Station X - The Stripping

2002
acrylic on loose canvas
44" x 66"

Station IX - The Third Fall

2002
acrylic on loose canvas
67" x 45"

Station V - Simon of Cyrene

2002
acrylic on loose canvas
65" x 79"

This is the largest painting in this series. I wanted to emphasize that Simon was pressed into service and to speculate that his service was unwilling because I think we so often carry our crosses unwillingly.

Station VII - The Second Fall

No photo yet


2002
acrylic on loose canvas
65" x 44"

Station III - The First Fall

No photo yet

2002
acrylic on loose canvas
60" x 43"

(I will place here some comments about this series of paintings. I'm not sure I'll have many unique comments for each piece. In 2001-2002, I painted 6 of the 14 stations of the cross. I originally intended to paint all 14).

These are painted on loose irregular canvas and hung with two large nails, ideally. The idea of this was to hang the paintings the way that Christ was hanged on the cross. I painted these traditional images in a style of painterly abstraction strongly influenced by action painting. In other words, I painted them with a significant degree of physical violence, which is, I think, appropriate to the theme of Christ's torture and death. Violence, physical and spiritual, is a theme of much of my work.

Rafka

2000
oil on wood
23" x 23"
on loan from the private collection of Jeff Muller

Rafka was a Maronite nun who, in 1885, "prayed to become a victim of divine love. She was struck blind that night and endured terrible pain in her right eye. that eye was eventually removed in an operation without an anesthetic. Rafka had hemorrhages from her eye two or three times a week every after as a result, yet this suffering did not stop her" (John Paul II's Book of Saints, p. 341). Despite and because of her great sufferings and disfigurements, Rafka was an image of God and an example of holiness.