The Inbetween Saturday...Stations of the Cross

Raffael painted ..."The Deposition of Christ"

A graissaille.

It's sort of the inbetween day in Easter Week.

Not Easter Sunday celebration 

Not Holy Friday and sorrow...

The day the disciples may have spent either hiding or crying.

I would have!

When I was still at Wirral Art College...Birkenhead..I chose Raffael's graissaille of the Deposition for a transcription.

I had been to Florence with a dear friend Ann ..and we went as did most tourists to The Uffizzi Galleries. This was not there!..but inspired by the renaissance art I saw and encouraged by our tutor...Ed...I took charcoal, inks, boot polish and paint and poured my heart into my interpretation of Raffael.

It hangs now mainly out of sight on a high wall in Penketh.

Today is the day I think of his mother taking him down off the cross.

Maybe dark times today... but a light to come.

Keep hopeful.

Good Friday

Here we are at Good Friday...

though I've just read that the word good was not the original word

rather..holy Friday.

Some of us have put crosses up in the front gardens as we can't meet as usual in the local square at 12 noon.

It's a good time as the whole community gathers by a local butchers and we have a time of silence.

If ever there was a need for us to be silent and do a lot of thinking...it's now.

The sun is shining and so I've been down at the bottom of the field on a deckchair just dreaming.

Posted this in the little front garden of the gallery this morning.

The crown of thorns was given to me by a Romanian artist many years ago when in another time of sadness and distress, we went to Romania with some provisions for hospitals and children's homes.

Let's pray that this time will make us all wake up to kindness and caring...maybe.

Station...poem.."Singers still Sing"

The potter hammered this into the little front garden this morning.

It's not really a conventional Stations of the Cross...that's not who we are.

But for those walking their walk..

it's a little bit of loving thought from us here.

...and blessings from us.

Holy Week...Stations.

I used the collages and pics of my assemblages to create a sort of Stations of the Cross a couple of years ago. 

We placed it in the little garden of a local Community Centre called The Oaks. 

People were invited to walk in the garden and pray or meditate..or just sit and be quiet.

This Holy Week we have decided to post some of them in the little front gardens of the gallery here at The Potters House Penketh. 

But I've also added some poems which were written for a collaboration that I had with my artist friend..@barbarajones when we walked together in Croxteth Park and Walled Garden once a month for a year.

The poem today was inspired by that walled garden.

But could just as easily be attributed to the gardens in the front of the shop!

They have been left very much to their own devices...and are a bit wild. 

I've always loved this verse in the Gospel of Matthew

*

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin  yet I say to you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these...

I'm hoping to publish some of the other posters and poems through the week.

So far these two are in the garden.

Stay safe...Stay well.

Much love.

Station three: Jesus falls the first time