The Covid Cross

During Holy Week 2020, during the first national Lockdown, I worked on a cross from recycled wood.  The wood comes from an old, discarded palette.  The surface is rough and weathered, and there’s evidence of lots of previous nails, a few of which still remain.  I often use a symbolic language of colour when I paint, with colours having a specific meaning.  I’ve glazed this cross with a range of transparent green and bluish pigments.  These colours stand for the renewal of creation.  I’ve also used a finely ground gold powder, which stands for God’s Glory.

I’ve added representations of the virus.  It’s disturbing to see this ominous, spiky foreign body being absorbed into the cross, but it makes the same point as a story deep in the pages of the Old Testament.  The Israelites were wandering in the wilderness.  They were freed from slavery, but life was really tough.  Along with shortages of basic necessities, they were plagued by poisonous serpents.  But God offered a solution.  he told Moses to make a bronze serpent and lift it high on a pole, so that those who had been bitten could look on it and live.

John 3 v 14 refers to this story, when he talks about the Son of Man being ‘lifted up’

For more information on this work please email Sophie