Mixed media oilgraph on canvas with blood // 36” x 36"

'Pieta' has only one meaning - Mary with the crucified body of Jesus. It means 'piety' but I saw this moment was so much more than that. Mary saw her child murdered. I called this Station 'Furia,' the Latin word for rage.

“Mothers
were not made to outlive their children
The mothers of war
The mothers of hunger
Their hearts like falling trees

(Murderers…)

Who of any would not give their last bread?
Their last breath?

(Stay back…)

The child taken
takes them

(We were to grow old…)

But there is a word in the wind
that will grow into a song no ear of man can ignore
But what does that matter now?
Galilean boy with the golden eyes

(I tried…
My son
My Lord

My baby...)”

***

This is the most emotional Station for me personally. I confess that the traditional renderings of this scene depict Mary looking at best stoic which always struck me as inauthentic. I wanted this to be like a scene from war footage of parents holding their dead children in grief. It needed to be that raw and that personal. That Mary is every mother who ever lost a child to violence.

Sylvia (Mary) was not a professional actor but was able to deliver this moment with tremendous honesty. The directions were simple - to scream at the soldier who had helped murder her son to get…back. The soldier was played by my friend Rod who was close friends with Sylvia and provided her a sense of safety to be this vulnerable.

In the upper right is a subtle figure holding a shaft of wheat. I called her ‘The Woman of Promise” as a symbol of hope. The image was a composite using a different take of the soldier. It was the final Station painted completing the series on April 5, 2005.

JESUS: Paolo Durrazzo
SOLDIER: Rod Ramsey
THE WOMAN OF PROMISE: Lisa Cullinan