This year I decided to paint
landscapes that were inspired on the Gospel readings belonging to the four
Sundays of Advent.
That is easier said than
done, because in the Roman Catholic Church in The Netherlands we read the
Gospels in a three year cycle.
So I asked my mother for her
old missal, published in 1957 (long before that three year cycle was
introduced) and used that as my source of information.
This painting is inspired by Luke 3, 4b - 5: The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.
5Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth (source of the English text
is www.kingjamesbibleonline.org)
Of course I have included
some other elements that are connected to Advent - at least they are connected
for me.
The star is a sign we hang
in our windows when Advent starts and we remove it after Epiphany. So in every
painting the star is present, though hidden behind some clouds.
A star means night, so the
main colour is Indigo and only where the light shines other colours are
introduced.
The landscapes are scenes
that are familiar to me: I did not search the internet for the landscapes of
Israel, but I chose to paint variations on the nature of The Netherlands and
Belgium. Sometimes I used a lot of imagination, sometimes I did not add much to
the original landscape.
Because the text of this Sunday is related to the text of the third Sunday I have tried to make the landscapes look like they are related also. I used most of the elements that featured in the other paintings, such as the bushes, the reeds, a stone, small trees, the path of course and the illusion of a forest in the background.
More information about my Advent Project can be found at my website www.jannekesatelier.webs.com
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