Michael Kenny drawings for Easter

As it's Easter I thought I'd put up a post about the continuing resonance of the key moment of Christianity. Christ's death and resurrection can also be read as the struggle to reconcile the idea of the sprit and the body. For artists working with images this event strikes right at the core of what it is to try and capture life through the act of drawing. Whether you are a Christian or not, for artists working in the Western European tradition images of the crucifixion are central to how the connection between matter and space are thought about.  

I have posted on this issue before and don't want to repeat what I wrote then, but the issue that keeps me interested in this is central to why I continue to make drawn images. When you are faced with a blank piece of paper it is as if you are facing the void. Any empty space that is pregnant with possibility has an aspect of the spiritual to it. As soon as you make a mark life is initiated and the forms that arrive, although simply marks, will be read as complex ideas and given weight beyond their simple physical traces. This battle to retain something of the life of experience and yet at the same time keep an awareness of the simple fact that the moment of drawing is simply just that, a being at one with a piece of paper and a mark making implement. It is in many ways an experience not too far away from some meditative states as described by various religious devotees. 

So for Easter I am leaving you with Michael Kenny's 'Stations of the cross' drawings.

See these earlier posts for further reflections on this topic. 

Drawing and the spirt
Drawing and life