Dark Sky

The synoptic gospel accounts of the day of Jesus’ crucifixion tell us that “from noon until three in the afternoon, darkness came over all the land”. Ignoring issues about whether this darkness was figurative or real (and if the later then how it was caused), this celestial gloom clearly adds to the drama of the story unfolding on the cross.

This picture is a response to this afternoon darkness, calling to my mind as it does an image of heavy storm clouds, or the (relatively brief) effects of an eclipse. I hesitate to say that this drawing actually shows anything, since it is intended to be rather abstract. Nevertheless, with a bit of imagination I would hope that at least a few elements of the Good Friday story might become apparent.

Oddly for such an abstract image, this drawing is actually remarkably close to what I had first imagined it might be. I have no doubt that a picture like this would be much more striking if it was painted with intense colours on a metre square canvas. However, because instead it was created using an infinitely forgiving drawing app, I was able to easily change and re-change the shape, position, texture and colour of nearly every block until the overall effect finally approached the scene in my mind’s eye. Iterating like that on canvas would have used an awful lot of paint …