Category: Good Friday

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Courage, friends

If you have a fear-hangover from COVID, perhaps Easter is the season in which you should make a conscious choice to drop it.

Working together, our best intentions can yield some astoundingly damaging results. That, in so many ways, defines the past year. With largely good intentions, we’ve managed to significantly dent the world’s economy, infringe on personal liberties, isolate the elderly and marginalized… and still COVID marches on.

It’s been rotten for the body religious, which was already hurting. Here in America, we reached a grim milestone in 2021: fewer than half of Americans consider themselves to be members of a church, synagogue, or mosque. That’s shocking for the nation widely considered to be the most religious in the western world.

I learned this week that St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church in Rochesterwill remain shuttered for the second Easter in a row. As I wrote about galleries last week, I doubt that many institutions will survive two years of closure.

In summer, 1999, I was asked to do a set of Stations of the Cross for St. Thomas’. By that September I’d been diagnosed with colon cancer. I had four kids, ages 11 to 3. My primary goal was to stay alive long enough to see them raised.

Finishing an art project seemed frivolous, and darned near impossible. I was especially disinterested in one that dealt with the violence leading up to the crucifixion. The following year was a late Easter, so by the time Holy Week arrived, I had a rough version finished.

I drew in my hospital bed, from my couch, during chemotherapy. I wasn’t at all engaged or enthused. When I was well enough, I arranged a massive photoshoot and took reference photos. The final drawings were finished two years later. They weren’t my best work, but at least they were done.

And yet, they’ve been in use for two decades. Every Holy Week, I got notes from a parishioner telling me how much they appreciated them. I’ve certainly gotten more meaningful mail about them than any other work of art I’ve ever done.

Except last year. Last Easter, the churches of America were closed. Their people observed the rites from afar. That was appropriate then, but we’ve lived out our penance for a year now. It’s almost unbelievable that the faithful among us don’t see the urgent necessity of gathering together to celebrate the risen Lord, this year of all years.

But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. Today is Good Friday. It commemorates Jesus taking the punishment intended for all mankind’s sin onto his own, all-too-human, body. It culminates in death and hopelessness. That’s what the Stations of the Cross are about, whether they’re in the Catholic, Episcopal or any other tradition.

Are you still afraid to go to church on Sunday? It’s hard to reconcile that with the promise of eternal life that Easter represents.

I’ve traveled as much this year as any year. I’ve taken sensible precautions, including at least a dozen COVID tests, all of which were negative. Although I have the same fears and griefs as anyone else, there’s a part of me that’s simply not afraid. I respect death; heaven knows I’ve seen enough of it. I have lost people I love to COVID. But I choose life.

Fear is a prison, a mighty weight, and the brake that stops all forward motion. If you’ve been left with a fear-hangover from COVID, perhaps Easter is the season in which you should make a conscious choice to drop it.

The Stations can be walked virtually here:

Set 1

Set 2

Set 3

Set 4

Set 5

 

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The weighing of souls

In which I paint the schooner Mercantile and am reminded that in God’s eyes, all men are equal.

Schooner Mercantile in drydock, by Carol L. Douglas

I awoke this morning laughing heartily at a chemistry joke. It evaporated as soon as I remembered that what chemistry I know would fit in my wash cup. People who assume I am well-educated ought to have known me in school, is all I can say.

That’s why I don’t quite understand what they’ve been doing to the masts of Heritage this week. It comes under the broad heading of “refinishing.” Each step involved being hoisted up and down the mast in a wooden basket, and there’s lots of scraping and buffing and brushing involved. If you want to feel particularly dumb, watch craftsmen at work in a discipline you don’t know.
Working on a mast of Heritage.
Meanwhile, Captains Doug Lee and John Foss are using the Little Giant crane to drop floating docks in the water. The crew of Mercantilehas busy caulking and painting, because it’s her turn up in the cradle.
Mercantile was launched from Little Deer Isle, Maine in 1916. Until 1943, she was in the coasting trade, after which she briefly went into mackerel fishing. She is one of the earlier boats adapted to the tourist trade. She’s called a “bald-headed schooner” because she carries no topsails.
That’s Mercantile at the back of The Three Graces, by Carol L. Douglas
I’ve painted Mercantilemany times, mostly at Camden harbor. “I didn’t know she was so pretty,” exclaimed a hand after he looked at my painting. Actually, she’s beautiful, especially when her green undercoat is replaced with its glossy black topcoat.
I’m always at a loss about how to treat the flotsam that accumulates on the shipyard ground. It’s part of the scene but it can be distracting. The crew had made themselves a long trestle table with sawhorses and planks. I put it in in various places, dissatisfied each time. I moved it again this morning because it was cutting off the bottom of my composition.
Mercantile, 2016, by Carol L. Douglas
It was so warm in the morning that I wore clamdiggers instead of long pants. I always forget that the open water at Rockland makes it cooler and windier than at my house. I was glad that I had to be back at Rockport in the early afternoon, because by the time I quit painting, my teeth were chattering. 
I was meeting a young man to finish burying the power line to my commercial sign. “She tells me I’m dumb,” he said of one of his employers. I’ve heard several variations on this theme recently. As a person who was never much good at school, I find it irritating.
There are many ways in which “judge not, lest ye be judged” can be applied. If you have the good fortune to be particularly smart or talented, bear in mind that these are gifts for which you paid nothing. And remember that there are many kinds of intelligences and talents out there. You may mock that humble man today, but in a hurricane his ability to tie knots may save your life.
In God’s economy, all men truly are equal. They are not measured by their looks, talents, race, or achievements, but by the weight of their souls, as mystics from the Egyptians onward have poetically observed. Once you start seeing the world through that lens, you will be kinder to yourself and others. Today is Good Friday, the historic date of the assassination of Jesus Christ. If you take nothing else from Christian faith, remember that in God’s eyes we are all equal.
Have a blessed Easter.
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Dark days

Descent from the Cross, 1616-17, Peter Paul Rubens.

Today and tomorrow, you may notice that your devout Christian friends seem weary and drawn as they deal with the most difficult two days in the Liturgical Year. Yeah, they’re grocery shopping.

That and pondering the stark reality of what Good Friday and Holy Saturday represent—that moment when Jesus was dead and it appeared that his final gambit failed. It doesn’t take much for the honest Christian to stand in the disciples’ shoes, for we have all doubted our faith.
The first comic book artist was Peter Paul Rubens, who could invest even death with great motion and drama. He painted several Depositions, and they would be difficult for a modern artist to mimic, since most of us have never seen a dead body that hasn’t been propped up with embalming and makeup.
Note the beautiful juxtapositions in the top painting: John the Baptist’s face pressed against Jesus’ wounds, a limp, bloody hand in that of a swarthy and lively young man; the other blue hand being held against the fair pink cheek of Mary Magdelene, the dead Christ’s face next to his grieving mother’s face.
Descent from the Cross, 1612-14, Peter Paul Rubens.
Rubens based this painting closely on an earlier version, above, reversing the composition and changing up some figures. But something radical also changed. The earlier painting is pure Baroque religious styling: Christ is idealized, and his handlers touch him with the reverence due the Eucharist. In the later painting, he is a dead man being brought down from the cross by his friends.
The Deposition, 1545, Daniele da Volterra.
A very different treatment is Daniele da Volterra’s fresco of the deposition. Yes, he was working from drawings by Michelangelo and, yes, he’s a Mannerist, but there’s still something very compelling about that dead Christ jutting out in space toward us.
Daniele suffered from his association with Michelangelo: after the master’s death, he was the poor unfortunate assigned the job of adding loincloths to The Last Judgment. Henceforth he would be nicknamed Il Braghettone, or the breeches-maker.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!