Wednesday 29 December 2021
Saturday 18 December 2021
Wednesday 17 November 2021
Sunday 14 November 2021
Friday 15 October 2021
Thursday 26 August 2021
Thursday 5 August 2021
Transfiguration : August 6th
Friday 23 July 2021
Friday 16 July 2021
Butterfly Conservation : annual survey
Tuesday 6 July 2021
Monday 28 June 2021
Monday 14 June 2021
Thursday 3 June 2021
Sunday 30 May 2021
Saturday 29 May 2021
Saturday 22 May 2021
Wednesday 19 May 2021
Sunday 16 May 2021
Tuesday 11 May 2021
Monday 10 May 2021
Thursday 6 May 2021
Monday 3 May 2021
Thursday 29 April 2021
Friday 23 April 2021
jesusmafa painting : Footwashing; Peter’s initial shock/horror that Jesus would ever do this menial task of washing his feet...
villagers in the Mafa area of the Cameroon worked together on various Biblical narratives and acted them out so that they could be photographed and later painted to make posters which could be shown to groups learning about Christianity to enable them to understand the Bible... they amassed a large number of paintings which are beautiful in portraying Jesus as an African living among them...this painting is just one example...
and here is another.....
jesusmafa : Jesus heals a blind man
Thursday 22 April 2021
for Indian Christian paintings in more Hindu style, see the artwork of Jyoti Sahi
Continuing this series on Christian paintings from various cultures... I am hoping to show you some more from Jesusmafa... & hopefully also some from Sri Lanka...
you might also be interested in a book published by the World Council of Churches: Christ for All Peoples...
Wednesday 21 April 2021
Sunday 18 April 2021
Jesus as the Good Shepherd John ch 10 : jesusmafa, Camerounian painting
good ! It took me some time, but I did manage to access my photos again today & Ive found another “good shepherd” painting... and for anyone who finds it confusing that this is a very ‘white’/European style after the African painting above... does it really matter whether Jesus is portrayed as an African or Indian, Chinese or European ? well... I think the answer is both ‘yes’ and ‘no’... even more confused ?
Well... we really have no idea at all what Jesus looked like... oh there have been various legends, but they only go back to about the 14th or 15th century... not back to the first century AD...the Gospel writers never mention what he looked like, and although its strange for us to realise, there were no phones or cameras around then, and so no first century photos ! So all we know is that he probably looked like any other first century Jew living in Palestine...often outdoors & travelling the length & breadth of the country, probably on foot & sometimes on a donkey, so he would most likely have been very brown and quite rugged.
Why then do we have so many paintings of Jesus showing him as a pinkish-white’ European-looking person ?
Maybe that has more to do with the history of art and both the artists and those who commissioned them than anything else...
For the first 200 years or so Jesus was depicted through symbols eg the first letter of the alphabet elongated into the shape of a fish, or an anchor drawn with the cross-bars as a reminder of the crucifixion and resurrection... were these perhaps hidden, secret symbols ? as Christians were persecuted and put to death for their faith... ? By the third or fourth century paintings on the walls of the Roman Catacombs [burial chambers ] were portraying Jesus as the Good Shepherd, in a Greek or Roman style of painting
Then we have the great artists of the Rennaisancelike Leonardo &Michaelangelo...both Italians...commissioned by Italian Popes... so naturally they would have chosen an Italian model when painting their pictures or creating sculptures ...including those of Jesus... and so we have tended to follow these artists, and have somehow come to think of Jesus as a ‘white’ person, without really thinking about it...Fortunately there are several artists from different cultures & countries around the world who are now seeing Jesus through their own eyes and painting him in many different ways...Over this next week or two I will try to find you some examples of paintings of Jesus from Indian, Chinese & African artists & more...