Chris Gollon's
exhibition "Incarnation, Mary and Women from the Bible" was at Guildford Cathedral last year and now on a national tour of cathedrals. His work has a tremendous capacity to draw us
into stories and moments that are unanswered and unresolved. These paintings
capture sexuality and power, longing and loss, tenacity and
exhaustion, tenderness and violence.
Gollon pays
attention to the detail: to little things; to nameless women and those women
whose stories we think we know. His images have compelling intimacy and
the horror of brutality.
Gollon enables us to inhabit even familiar
stories without knowing the outcome; or rather, despite knowing what happens
next, we are caught up in glimpses of prayer, sorrow, contemplation or
bewilderment.
Chris Gollon:
‘There Was No Remedy (Gollon
Version)’ 2012
In this image, he refuses
to resolve the moment for us. Here is a
woman whose expression conveys a depth of hopelessness. Perhaps the honesty of that is strangely
liberating – it expresses a truth that sometimes we find ourselves beyond
words. We cannot escape the reality that unfairness, cruelty, illness and even
our own tendencies to shut ourselves off can isolate us. In those moments we can do nothing other than
go through it.
That waiting creates a capacity to
endure; it forms our character. It is sometimes all there is: this
abiding in love; this refusal to collude with a naive optimism; this facing of
the darkness as the tears dry on our cheeks.
Gollon
makes us fix our gaze on one for whom there was no remedy. As she abides and
endures, Paul's words to the Romans echo within us: suffering produces
endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and
hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our
hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us (Romans 5:3-5).
Hope is the confidence placed in God:
which faith expresses and which love makes known. Such confidence, the
substance of such hope, flows from an experience of God. This experience of
being accepted is not just in relation to Paul’s personal encounter with the
risen Lord. He is expressing a conviction rooted in the content of faith. He is convinced about human reliance on God
in the midst of suffering. Patience is
not for him a stoical attitude; rather it is about assurance in the face of
adversity which leads to greater resilience and character. Justine Allain-Chapman
in her book ‘Resilient Pastor’ takes this argument further to say it also
increases our capacity to be altruistic. She argues this not just on the basis
of Scripture and the Christian tradition, but psychological studies.
Hope does not disappoint because we are
not reliant on human resources, but on the love of God poured into our hearts
by the Spirit. Paul invites us to trust in God’s love poured out in creation;
that love made manifest in Christ as life-giving power; and in the Spirit as
the channel of that ongoing sustaining and character forming love.
That overwhelming love is revealed in the
cross: here love human and divine is poured out. Mary is emotionally exhausted and spiritually
spent; yet there remains a physical strength. In boldly choosing to focus
on the base of the cross, Gollon intensifies the harrowing reality of her
suffering; but he also makes us pay attention to the faithfulness and endurance
of a woman whose life is woven into the Gospel, whose story continues to arouse
our curiosity. We have to wait with her
as she waits alongside her beloved Lord.
Chris Gollon:
Mary Magdalene at the Base of the Cross (2013)
She is named as Mary Magdalene - a woman who is restored to wholeness and dignity through her encounter with Jesus. The stories of other nameless women are attributed to her: stories of sexual impropriety or exploitation; of penitence and restoration; of mental anguish and healing. She is the type of women who witness to who Jesus is: lavishly anointing his feet with oil and tears; crying out with fear and despair on the way to Calvary; waiting at the cross, near the tomb and in the garden. Our imaginations are shaped by all that is told in memory of her; all that is told points to a reality beyond our imagining.
In this particular painting, Gollon draws us into a moment of sheer endurance in the face of suffering. Mary has refused to walk away. Her exhaustion is a moment in a vigil that is yet to come to an end; her whole being responds to the one who transformed her life in and through love. Love has been poured into her heart by Jesus - the one who is the fullness of God's love made perfect in human weakness. Gollon presents us with a woman whose character has been formed by sorrow, acceptance, loyalty, challenge and compassion. Her character is seen in sinew and touch; in her poise and closing eyes.
Mary Magdalene has both passed beyond and also anticipates this moment without remedy. She has confronted the horror of the cross and sleep weighs heavily on her. Yet when she awakes she will stand bewildered before an empty tomb; she asks through her tears 'where have you laid him?' She waits in the hope of being able to treat her beloved Lord with dignity in death. Yet before we reach the garden, Gollon refuses to allow the darkness to overcome. As in Watts' 'Hope', this woman cannot see - her eyes closed in exhaustion; caught up in the deep sleep of grief. Unlike 'Hope', she is not making a note on her broken lyre; instead her hand grasps the base of the cross. Here the love of God stakes a claim in the midst of all that appears calamitous, hopeless and final. For Watts, light was a single star; here light breaks in like the dawn.
As the poet Micheal O'Saidhail
writes in ‘Knowing’ A majesty and awe, but even more
the wonder/That something is where nothing might have been. Even in our
brokenness a beyond is breaking in. Vivid oranges and yellows infuse
this moment with hope. A hope that does not disappoint because it is rooted in
the love of God which is being poured out in sorrow and at the end, at the
moment of final breath. It is a love being poured out in endurance that
means this moment is also the beginning of life. Love has taken root in Mary's
heart; a love that she will recognize when her risen Lord calls her by
name. She will bear witness to what she
has seen - love welling up in her heart.
© 2015 Julie Gittoes
