Stations of the Cross (IV): Jesus Meets His Mother (Final Version)

'Stations of the Cross (IV): Jesus Meets His Mother' (Final Version)

Category: Paintings

Artist: Chris Gollon

Subject: Installation

Year of Work: 2003

Media: mixed media on canvas

Size: 40" x 30"

This painting belongs to the series of Stations of the Cross Chris Gollon has been commissioned to paint by the Church of England for a grade-one listed church in London, designed by Sir John Soane. See Commissions page for further details on the whole series of works, and a critique by art critic Laura Gascoigne.
In early 2004, this painting was also exhibited in St Paul's Cathedral, London, in the exhibition 'Presence: Images of Christ For the Third Millennium', along with works by Bill Viola, Maggi Hambling, Craigie Aitchison, Peter Howson and Tracey Emin.
In this work Gollon paints the moment when Jesus sees his mother in the crowd. The Bible does not tell us if words were exchanged. Gollon, using his own son as the model for Jesus throughout this commission, used here his daughter as the model for Mary. Perhaps, like any a parent who finds herself in the terrible position of not being able to help her child, she cannot bear to look.
Yet their physical proximity and equal height in this picture implies the psychological and emotional bond between mother and child. The blue arrows, and rich saturation contrast with Mary's blue gown, heighten our consciousness of this her moment on the way of the Cross. It is perhaps the same powerless child, which Gollon uses in Station II, who cries out in dramatic speech-bubble form, for the cruelty to cease. The composition, like a turning wheel, and the 3/4 length figures both echo back to Carravaggio and to Bosch, and in this modern treatment also heighten the sense of this being a poignant and cruelly fleeting moment snatched from the general brutality. This Station was funded by the congregation and the Parish Church Council of St John on Bethnal Green.