Michael Donnelly
  home     galleries    curriculum vitae    news & text    contacts    mailing list    copyright   

Image: 9 of 10   gallery | previous | next

       
Artist Michael Donnelly
Title Baptismal Waters: Colour studies.
Year 2015
Medium Oil on Canvas
Height 126
Width 54 cm
   
From the Exhibition Religious Art Prize: Living Waters, Chapel on Station Gallery, 2015

"The vertical triptych is based on small sections of photographs from my children's baptisms. The two older children, Thomas and Beatrice, were baptised in the Yarra River near Warrandyte in 2005. My younger son, William, was baptised in the ocean at Anglesea in 2009. I have previously created artworks about their baptisms in a panoramic, narrative style. This time I wished to concentrate on the colour and movement, reflections and play of light on water. The figures of my children are almost incidental but essential to what is happening in the water. In one way, the waters of baptism are actually more about death and drowning, dying to self with Christ, who died for us, and yet. . .

Jesus said that the one miraculous sign he would give to his generation was the sign of Jonah. That prophet was cast into the sea; for all intents and purposes he died, when he was swallowed by the great fish; but then he was regurgitated - he came to life again, he was resurrected. The waters enable a washing clean of ourselves, our souls, and are the gateway to life, new life in Christ. They are both the waters of death and of life - living waters."

The artwork was awarded Second Prize in the Chapel on Station Gallery 2015 Religious Art Prize, on the theme: living waters.

It will be on show at Chapel on Station Gallery until Wednesday 16th September, 2015.

 

 

 

 

make an enquiry