Deposition

One wonders how the artist C.S. Lawrence first chose to begin to explore religious art, and to lead her audience on a journey to taste the yearnings and agonies of Jesus Christ.  How did this seeming artistic diversion come to pass? All of us are familiar with the Lawrence we know and love – a personal style that is warmly recognised in her familiar depictions of the grand and beloved historic Three Cities, their people, and the cappuccino life that embraces the meandering comings and goings of the community.

“True, religious art was not my thing. It was a request from a collector for a depiction of The Last Supper that began the journey. I hadn’t previously tackled anything so big. The creation of this work triggered something that effectively woke me up. It took me back to my school days as a boarder. My first sketches, at the age of 14, were of religious and sacred interpretations of Biblical stories.”

Meeting on the Way of the Cross

On completion of the canvas, the artist was asked to paint a second, similar depiction of The Last Supper for another collector.

The identification of Christ with the whole of the human condition is well documented in paint. Christ identified with our failings and lifts us all up to the divine. Our reading and experience of the Passion thus allows us to identify ourselves with Christ, as he identified with us.

The Passion paintings may be described as being ‘in the style of’ or ‘after’. Most certainly these paintings are very much ‘after’ the original Renaissance artists, and ‘in the style of’ C.S. Lawrence. The canvas surfaces present a kaleidoscopic ray of jewel-like colours, from which emerge a theatre of clearly recognisable leading characters and figures. These display their emotions and their gut-wrenching hu­man respon­ses to the mocking, scourging and crucifixion, to the recovery of the body, and to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The engulfing emotional detritus over­flows upon each and every canvas.

Lawrence has daubed, dashed and seemingly crashed through the emotional extremes of Christ’s family, friends, and loved ones. She has expressed emotional nuance through texture. She has expressed revolt, fervour, and a sense of the political, with the random employment of em­bossed lettering that emblazes and brands. She has stood as witness, commentator and activist. She has offered herself as conduit for paint and artistic pilgrimage.

The engulfing emotional detritus overflows upon each and every canvas

Like an actress on the theatrical stage, she has processed her emotional response through each brush stroke and mark and achieved the painterly performance of her life. She has lived each role, and each interpretation of each role, and seemingly worked through the broken hearts and broken bones.

Crowning of Thorns

The artist’s emotional range is depicted in each expression, gesture and imploring outstretched hand, each impassioned and accusatory cry, the grieving sense of despair, the agonising, sorrow-laden screams, and doubting-Thomas prods.

And here is the thrust. In contemporising The Passion, Lawrence has referenced the human condition in present history. What we associate with the Bible and with biblical references is alive and thriving in the modern day. We are forced to realise that we are not only looking at paintings of past history. In recent years, reportage from Syria has emerged, showing the bodies of executed men hanging on crosses. A punishment used in ancient Rome emerged as a feature of Syria’s civil war. The dead men are blindfolded – their limp, outstretched arms tied to planks of wood with green string.

What is even more utterly incomprehensible is the modern human condition and bland blanket response, in modern war-torn times. The reportage at the time showed a handful of people, including children, taking a closer look, while others went about their normal business unfazed by the bodies suspended a few feet away.

Pietà

What would Christ say?

And at the ninth hour, Jesus shouted in a loud voice, “Eloi Eloi lama sabachthani?” translated as: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

For art buffs, this is a challenging opportunity to test their knowledge of art history and renaissance art history in particular.

Be on the look-out for Dutch, Italian, Flemish and French masters of the renaissance, plus the modern painter Edouard Manet – one of the very rare religious paintings by Manet went against all the traditional practices of religious painting.

Relics of the Passion were brought to the venue, the Oratory of the Crucifix, in the 17th century, when a wealthy confraternity (of the Agony) was set up in 1634. As one enters the chapel, on both the left and the right side, one may read the list of wealthy members, hand-written to 1977, when the confraternity declined.

Entombment

The devotion towards the Passion thrived with the arrival of a crucifix from Canida, (Iraklion in Crete) in 1669, donated by Maltese sailor Angelo Balzan. Lift your gaze and admire four elegantly carved stone statues depicting various Stations of the Cross on either side of the chapel. They were carved by two convicts, who served their sentence within the chapel, and served our community with their sublime creativity.

The Passion exhibition, and the profundity of this historic setting, is a gift for the soul to rediscover the Passion through C.S. Lawrence’s art.

The exhibition runs until April 16 at the Oratory of The Crucifix, Oratory Street, Cospicua.

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