Toledano

The story in my head when I painted this was about Mary's despair when she heard her son utter his last words.. It is probably blasphemous to suggest she would have despaired, but just as I set out to paint Jesus as a damaged man – see “Jesus falls” and “Jesus speaks to the women of Jerusalem” - I wanted to shown Mary as a grieving mother woman regretting the loss of a son for whom she had hoped for so much. I only showed the feet of Jesus as my interest was in her response to the event. We are told that despair is destructive, but I could not help thinking that at this moment when she heard her son’s last grim statement Mary must have despaired.That was not what she had expected after all those wonderful words she seemed to have heard all those years ago.

She pulls her cloak over her head as she cannot bear to look on the poor torn body of her dead son.

What did he mean? “paid in full”?

That is what Joseph would have noted in his accounts, "New dining tables for Mrs Shapiro, olive wood, 4 No., paid in full."

What was going on? Why was the sky suddenly dark and why were there flashes of lightning? If you want answera to this you will have to refer to the Gospel accounts. Those semi literate writers anticipated MGM studios by a couple of thousand years.

I had vague images im my mind of paintings I had seen in Toledo, by El Greco. The bodies are exaggerated expresionistically and the colours are vivid and unnatural, hieghtening the emotional impact. I set out to be as brave. Mary's dress and veil/cloak are the traditional red and blue. I let rip with the feet on the cross , swollen and bloody and the grain of the wood where the lightning has created area of intense brightness and corresponding deep shadow.

I started painting in the top left corner with an area of Prussian Blue and another of violet below it, through which a streak of lightning breaks. That may bee because I paint and write left handed - everything else I do with my right. I can move dwom and acroos the canvas without smudging. Then I set up the yellow in the middle of the picture as it contrasted completely with the blues. THe skin colours are shifted by the lightning flash which breaks into the yellows and touches the buildings in the background. These are more Byzantine than Judeo-Arab, though I did put in a green Mashrabiya window.

Usually I paint onto the gesso coating of a canvas once I have sealed in my drawing, but on this occasion I built up textures with emulsion paint before starting, which made every brush stroke harder to execute. I am not going to do that again!

Mary mourns at the foot of the cross