When I made these paintings, I was thinking about a creative reimagining of the three days that Jesus was dead. Though I worked from many references, the most influential was Hans Holbein’s painting The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb, a painting that Dostoevsky described as “enough to make a man lose his faith”.  

     Whereas many paintings of the events of Easter tend to depict the cross or the resurrection, few rest in the reality of Jesus’ death and decay in the way that Holbein’s does. Scripture spends just as little time in these three days between Death and Resurrection. I yearn to know more about these days. 

     How did Mary grieve her son? How did Peter grapple with his betrayal? How did the disciples mourn their Messiah? I am just as interested in the physical reality of Christ's body; what happens to a body that is simultaneously on the road of decomposition and resurrection? 

     I don’t always feel the glorious joy of Easter Sunday, and I am not often prepared for the horrors of Good Friday, rather I find myself constantly returning to the waiting of those three days. I hope that these paintings exist in the theological tension of “already but not yet”; that they represent all of the promises made but not yet fulfilled, where we anxiously await resurrection.