About the Painting: “Wedding at Cana”
In 2021, I settled into my first official studio and tacked up a piece of raw canvas that felt very large at the time.
I didn't have any plans for it yet, but I left the canvas up on the wall to watch and wait as I got to work breaking in my new studio.
As I embarked on the first paintings to come from that season, I began reaching for bright colors and making quick, bold, energetic marks in a subconscious effort to challenge the thoughts of intimidation that lingered in the back of my mind.
It wasn't long after I started painting in my studio that I made an interesting observation about my creative process.
As I painted, I poured a great deal of love and care into the color palettes I used.
I would labor over my mixes of colors, apply them to whatever I was working on, and discover a little still leftover.
There wasn't usually enough to justify storing and saving the paint – but it was always more than I was happy to throw out.
After all, I poured a lot of love into that paint.
The colors reflected how I felt on the day I mixed them, and I wanted to hold onto those feelings - to preserve the little remnants instead of washing them away.
On a day I felt particularly in love with my color palette leftovers, I looked up at the large blank canvas - still hanging patiently on the wall - and walked over to it with a new idea.
Without overthinking my decision, I scooped a dollop of color from my palette, and with a spontaneous jerk of my hand, I disrupted the empty surface with a stroke of pale green.
It was a mark that looked like a paint-covered kid had made it – unrestrained and joyful on that clean surface.
I emptied the rest of my palette from that day with little bursts of yellow, peach, and cadmium red light scattered across the canvas – just a handful of small marks surrounded by empty space.
I stepped back and silently planned to return for this spontaneous mark-making exercise the next time my canvas called for it.
Over the next year and a half, I would make quick visits to this new fixture of my studio – either I'd release some energy while passing by with a pastel in hand, or I'd make deliberate new additions with leftover paint.
The canvas landed at a stopping point around late 2022 when I was reading a devotional about the Wedding at Cana – a beautiful story of Jesus' first recorded miracle in the Bible (John 2).
To summarize – the wine begins to run out at a large wedding feast, and Jesus, at the request of his mother, Mary, turns large pots of water into wine. The miracle saves the bride and groom from humiliation and officially marks the beginning of Jesus' ministry.
I love this story for a lot of reasons, but on the day I was reading it, there were two distinct details of the story that struck me:
1. The setting of Jesus' first recorded miracle is at a wedding - a joyful celebration of a new beginning. And how beautiful is it that we can see God's abundant love for his children in this?
2. Jesus didn't just turn the wine into any cheap old wine - he turned it into *really* good wine. So much so that the party's host tasted it - having not known where it came from - and exclaimed, “I can't believe the best of the wine was saved for last.” Because typically, you would offer the best wine first, before everyone is too drunk to know the difference.
As I sat with those details – the beauty and the abundance and the joy of it all – I remembered a famous painting based on this story which I learned about in an art history class.
The Wedding Feast at Cana, by Paolo Veronese
When I looked up the painting to jog my memory, I was delighted to see a sweet resemblance between the marks on my big, colorful canvas and the composition, hues, and movement of Veronese's incredible work of art.
I'm not stretching to compare my painting to Veronese's, but the association of his painting to mine brought me a way to tie my canvas to the story of Jesus' miracle – and I love this so much.
My painting, Wedding at Cana, marked a significant beginning in my studio three years ago. It also feels like a time capsule in a way – catching and preserving the evidence of all the paintings that passed through my hands over the time that it hung on my wall.
It's abundant and joyful and full of hope.
Because it holds physical evidence of dozens of paintings that have come and gone from my studio, it encourages me to look toward my future as a painter – denying the attempts of intimidation to discourage me.
Thank you for reading (or listening).
Wedding at Cana is officially sold as of May 2023.
If you’re interested in a signed, limited-edition print of the painting, click here.
Details:
Wedding at Cana (2021)
54" x 42"
Mixed media on raw canvas
Signed, dated, and ready to hang
Custom framed
SOLD
