Art Studio · Class
Holy Week
Not a single picture but a slow walk — sitting with two quiet, weighty scenes, pairing each with paintings that have tried to hold them, and letting our own art be the response. A reflection any family can sit inside.
Scene one · Luke 22
The Garden of Gethsemane
“Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” He prays in agony while, a stone's throw away, his closest friends fall asleep.
Mikhail Shankov — Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane
Jesus prays as torchlight from the approaching crowd begins to glow at the edge of the dark — dread and resolve in the same frame.
Felice Carena — Apostles
Five figures, all asleep. The painting asks where you are in the scene — watching, or drifting off.
Scene two · John 21
Breakfast on the shore
After the resurrection, the disciples are fishing and catch nothing — until a figure on the beach calls out. It's Jesus, with a charcoal fire already lit. Three times he asks Peter, “Do you love me?” — once for each time Peter had denied him.
We set the scene with Rado Javor's luminous seascape The Sea of Galilee (2016), then sat with two very different responses to that morning:
J. Kirk Richards — Christ and the Fishermen
Hushed, golden, half-abstract — the meeting on the shore painted as something remembered rather than photographed.
Vinícius Silva de Almeida — The Tears of St Peter
Six thousand light bulbs filled with water, hung on threads — Peter's grief turned into a room full of suspended, glowing tears. (A wall of light, fittingly.)
We looked, and we asked
“Why do you think Jesus asked Peter the same question three times?”
“What stands out to you as you hear the passage and really look at the work?”
“If you could step into one of these scenes, which would it be — and where would you stand?”
We close by offering each other a blessing, then everyone answers the last question in their own medium. Feel free to draw your response.
Then we made our own
Our young artists' responses. Tap to look closer.