CAPTION: Calvary 1998 by Craigie Aitchison commissioned by Liverpool Cathedral.
“Child-like” image of the cross communicates by simplicity
Bishop Robert’s latest letter to the diocese in the Devon Magazine for March reflects on artist Craigie Aitchison’s work Calvary 1998:
Unlike some contemporary painters where you need an information pack to tell you what they’re painting, Craigie Aitchison’s work communicates by its simplicity. I first encountered his work in Truro Cathedral and then in a side chapel in King’s College, Cambridge for which he had been commissioned shortly before his death in 2009.
There is a child-like quality about his portrayals of the crucifixion that are profound. They tend to be a dark palette of sombre purple hills, drab olive-green foregrounds, with menacing dark blue skies and soil that is brown verging on black. His landscapes are empty and stylised. But this gives extraordinary focus to the cross and a translucent quality to the figure of Christ. All the light in his pictures comes from the Crucified One. It is as if the light of the world is dying and the world is going into mourning.
One feature that recurs in his crucifixions is the presence not of humans but of animals. In his painting in the Tate, it is not the centurion or Mary and the beloved disciple that gaze up at the face of the crucified, but a little dog. It leans forward, sniffing the air, puzzled, almost in dialogue with Christ. Little birds sit perched on the arm of the cross, watching. When asked about this, Craigie said that the creation alone had the innocence and the perception to bear witness to the magnitude of the event. The cross represented humankind’s capacity for destructive selfishness which is happy to destroy truth, beauty, and ultimately, Life itself.
As we journey towards Holy Week we need to step aside and, with Craigie Aitchison’s little dog, gaze at the cross, ponder and perhaps enter into conversation with Christ crucified. Many in their busyness pass by the cross unknowing and perhaps uncaring; but we need to attend to it for our health and our salvation. And if we do, we discover not only how all the light proceeds from the face of the Crucified One, but also how it falls across our own face, and speaks to us of the love of God.
+Robert Exon
