Mary of Magdala...over the years...

I've just read an article about an artist who has been going into her studio each year on Good Friday to work on something from the passion of Christ...and once an idea forms, she will begin..."the subject chooses you; you don't choose the subject. You have to remain vulnerable to what happens to you in life... You're not in control...its something other." Maggie Hambling, quoted in "Good Friday - looking east", an article by Malcolm Doney :

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2015/3-april/features/features/good-friday-looking-east

For me it is not so much Good Friday as Easter Day..
.I rarely have the luxury of being able to go into my studio on Easter Day itself...but around this time of year I am drawn towards John 20...the empty tomb and Mary of Magdala... 
and over the years a series has emerged...

One year, being struck by how disturbing and frightening it was to discover that the tomb was empty ... in the darkness before dawn...

  I looked more closely at Mary of Magdala and her fear that Jesus' tomb had been desecrated, 

and that this blinded her to everything except trying to find the body and bring it back for decent burial... 

I painted her distraught and weeping outside the tomb

Later on, I was struck by her courage in daring to look back inside the tomb again;

though still with the refrain going around and around in her mind: "they have taken him away, and I don't know where they have put him" 

 Another year I imagined her turning around, coming back up out of the tomb and being blinded by the brilliant light of dawn after becoming accustomed to the darkness...
.hearing someone she supposed to be the gardener...
 and here I found myself trying to convey the Risen Christ waiting with deep concern for Mary, asking why she was weeping, and waiting for the right moment to cut through her panic by simply calling her by name: "Mary"... so that she could finally recognize his voice... and in John's Gospel she immediately recognised him, saying: "Rabbouni"...

It was some months before I dared try this painting...
but eventually I knew it was being mysteriously "given" to me...

all these paintings have had that same quality...of needing to wait... sometimes to try making rough sketches to enable them to emerge from somewhere deep within...until eventually there comes a glimmer of "ah...yes... thats how I must begin..." and then, step by step...layer by layer... they have been painted...sometimes needing to wait for several days before further inspiration came...always being vulnerable, and having to "let go".

Of course this isn't the end of the story... and I am still being drawn to paint, trying to convey Mary Magdalen running to tell the disciples... and of their response...

                                                                                              and then that is only the beginning !