“All artists are only midwives that enable creativity to emerge from the Eternal.”
- Daniel Bonnell
Daniel Bonnell, Pieta Meditation, 2022
Mixed media on grocery bag paper
14” x 17” (framed)
There is nothing to sell or promote here except an attempt at beauty for those who seek it like myself. When two forces of beauty combine together to form a third dynamic we begin to enter the realm of mystery and wonder. Consider a sunset (the sun and atmosphere) or the first steps of a child (innocence and risk). Now consider Michelangelo’s La Pietà and the symbol of life - water. The third element can only be formed in how you understand beauty beyond symbolism. What do you see?
Michelangelo Buonarroti, La Pietà,
1498 -1499, marble
Daniel Bonnell, First Moment of the Resurrection, 2022
Mixed media on grocery bag paper
14” x 17” (framed)
Down through the centuries artists have avoided a lot of religious symbolism and representation for sacred moments such as the Transfiguration, the Reunion of Jesus back to the Father (Ascension), as well as the Resurrection. Perhaps they were simply too much to comprehend and too spiritual to represent? Or maybe the artists themselves felt the subject matter was too open-ended to conceive? Perhaps as artists we make things too difficult for ourselves? This drawing-painting on a grocery bag simply seeks to ask the question, “What was it like to be the Son of God in a half divine and half flesh dimension?” Therefore, the point of the piece is not to produce a glorious “Handel’s Messiah”-type visual representation. Its singular purpose it to pause and reflect, think and meditate, on what it might have been like for the Christ during those first moments following the Resurrection.