Apocalypse Paintings
The Apocalypse Prize contest inspired these pieces and dictated that they be completed in a medieval form. All of these are painted with bees wax or encaustic medium.
This selection of images comes after the words, “Here is the patience of the saints…”, and, “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on”. Image 1- “The Harvest of the Wheat”- Revelation 14: 14-16. Image 2- “The Harvest of Grapes”-Revelation 14:17-19. Image 3- “The Winepress”-Revelation 14:20
The harvest of wheat and the grapes recall the Eucharistic elements, bread and wine, and the harvest of martyrs of the church. The winepress producing a river of blood up to the bridles of the horses, illustrates the power of God wielded through the laying down of the life of Christ followed by the laying down of the lives of the saints, “…who die in the Lord from now on”, in ordinary compassionate living and extraordinary martyrdom. This Eucharistic action, harvest of wheat and grapes, (bread and wine, body and blood), disempowers worldly power symbolized here in the horses, the ancient powerful weapons of war, which lose their power when in water “up to their bridles”. “The patience of the saints” continues the victory which began in the work of Christ and is here symbolized in the Laurel wreath or martyrs crown framing the scene. Christ is victor, “trampling down death by death” (from Pascal Hymn), and continues his work in the lives of His saints who in patience, “die in the Lord from now on”.
