THE
STATIONS
OF THE
CROSS
1977 -1983
Birthday of the Christ
Oil on canvas
50”x 72”
I think that I was just trying to start it, trying to find my way into it. Because the more I thought about [you know what it is, what it's about, I didn't know how I was gonna handle it. I wanted to get as far away from the Classic stuff, you know the Classic church kind of imagery, where everything is nice and slick and beautiful painting.
That's not what I was trying to do.
The guy who's Jesus Christ, was a musician, and when he saw that, it spooked the hell out of him. I said don't worry, nobody will ever know. And then there's all the microphones, because I was playing a lot of outdoor gigs then too, because you'd see them when you were sitting up. All these cables you trip over.
Jesus is condemned to death
Oil on canvas
72”x 50”
I went to the library and I read about Crucifixion, started reading about what it does to the human body. I wanted to know about it, like I was really going to prepare to kill someone...and then I realized I was going to have to kill him. I was going to have to kill Jesus Christ.
And I got this little booklet from somebody who's a Catholic, with the right numbers and the right sequence, and that's all I went on.
Jesus is made to bear his cross
Oil on canvas
72”x 50”
The Cyrenean helps Jesus to carry his cross
Oil on canvas
72”x 50”
Everybody knows Jesus Christ. I wasn't thinking about him religiously. He was a political figure, a challenge to the system.
I just picked him out of the crowd and said, you're the guy that would be the most recognizable, get people's attention the most, without getting into the politics of all that. And that's how it got going.
I always thought it was as cruel and brutal a thing as you could do to someone. In the Catholic Church I grew up in, they were very small, very nice. There's no violence.
They were always kind of patronizing you, they re not about the horror. They scare the hell out of you in the nicest way possible.
You stand in front of each one and pray.
Each one of them you stop, that's why they got them like that. You're always in trouble, they tell you you're guilty of original sin.
You go to each one and you relive the agony of them. With each painting, I was reliving the whole physical part of it.
Veronica wipes the face of Jesus
Oil on canvas
72”x 50”
There's no pretty way to murder a man in public, drag him through the streets in front of his friends and his mother and hang him up. They always show Christ as benign, looking up at the sky or ceiling as if he's saying, 'Oh well, you know how it is God. But this guy is screaming. He's terrified he's going to die.
And that's why, I'd see all these great paintings by Velazquez, and Goya, maybe not so much Goya, and Rembrandt's Christ is dead as a doornail, but some of the other great painters. They always had it through the hands. And they always look so beautiful, they look like they just took a shower, had a cigarette, everything's good. And I thought, what a horrible way to kill someone.
Jesus falls the second time
Oil on canvas
72”x 50”
Oil on canvas
72”x 50”
That's just roughed in there, the cross and everything. I just roughed them in, painted them in. I just wanted to get excited about, and not get all hung up on just one thing.
And then go back in. The composition to me, was of real importance; all the angles.
And then I'd go back and pull stuff and drop it back. It becomes more realized. The thing was to get it down first, before it goes away.
So I started doing big scale and I figured, try all different things on it. Try a crowd, just run a shadow across them...
Oil on canvas
72”x 50”
The background of the city is where I thought this would be happening, on the street. I find the city brick has everything to tell me, because it's all laid by hand. So I thought Christ being a carpenter and all that, it's the kind of place where he would live.
Oil on canvas
72”x 50”
Although he's not important, that's what motivated me to put him in there. It isn't just an ornament. It could help say what I was trying to say.
Jesus falls the third time
Oil on canvas
72”x 50”
One night I was coming down the street, and on the corner a drugstore that looked like an Edward Hopper painting. I saw these two guys beating the hell out of some guy. And I wanted to run but I didn't know if I could, you know the dream where your legs can't move... and I kept on going. So that's what I mean, I tried to think of real experiences I've had, so I'd know what that guy felt like back there.
Jesus stripped of his garments
Oil on canvas
72”x 50”
Nobody knew I was working on these.
Musicians would come up to the studio to get me, because it was in town, we’d be going on gigs and they'd be like, What the hell? Go from that to a bar. Everyone's having a ball, laughing. I can remember going into the bigger studio over there, walking in off the street, closing the door and feeling…wooh. I could feel the paintings. Even though they were my paintings, I could feel them.
The paintings are all active. Everything in them is cooking all at once. These paintings are screaming, every inch is twisted and filled with action because that's the way it is in the streets, in the city, in the world.
It's jammed, it's gritty, it's screaming all the time.
I realized I had to go through the whole thing and not blink or flinch. I had to think about what would your mother or my mother feel like, seeing him in this situation.
Reduce it to real flesh and blood, human emotion; use that to convey the mood of the times. And that's how it motivated me.
You're a product of the times, whether you want to be or not.
Jesus nailed to the cross
Oil on canvas
72”x 50”
Trying to remember the momentum of these hands, coming into that one, over and into that one. Hitting there. The one, two, three and then the gun, psh... Taking you right over to that one. And then all that stops, and then it would just fade off into the night. Throw him into a wagon and go... It stopped raining. The sound of the rain and everything stopped. So it's just kind of wet and that's the end, that's it.
That's all she wrote.
I thought about rain, it's cold. Like death is cold. Put all those feelings without getting overboard or something. I don't know. Just let it happen. I forgot about that, that guy back there with the umbrella.
The rain pouring off of the umbrella.
And the little yellow light kicking up from him. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.
Jesus dies on the cross
Oil on canvas
72”x 50”
I remember Billie Holiday said, her husband, a guy Louis McKay, came home one night, had lipstick on his collar at 4 in the morning. She said, what's that on your collar man? He said oh well I, I, met this...
She said, Stop explaining. Take a bath, man.
She said, then I took an ugly situation and turned it into a beautiful song. And it's called "Don't Explain." And it's a classic, a Jazz classic. And that stayed with me, because that's when she took that agony and turned it in a beautiful song to live on forever.
Don't explain,
I know you mixed with some dame,
You had lipstick on your collar,
Don't explain.
Jesus is taken down from the cross
Oil on canvas
72”X 50”
Somebody asked me long ago why I didn't do it then, in 72 A.D or whenever it was. I said I don't know what it was like in 72 A.D. I live now, I live now. This is all I know, now. I don't know what it'll be like in 100 years. All I know is what I've experienced. Just look out the window, and here you are.
Jesus placed in the sepulcher
Oil on canvas
72”x 50”
The village green
Oil on canvas
72”x 50”