Acrylics on 3 canvas drops 1m x 1.2m.

Right from the start I was puzzled as to where this was one was going. I started with a loaded black paintbrush. I sat and stared at those strong lines in the triptych wings and could not help but think of mid-eastern burial casks of the high born. Simplicity was demanded and there was this black ovoid in the middle. Lost, I finger tested the dryness of the paint and marred its surface! I sandpapered the spot and the effect gripped me. Out popped a sandpapered forehead, a nose, a mouth and .... the face of Christ. He's sandpapered himself in! I"m busted. My interface with Christ is a love relationship.

In my art practice as in life doubt is the inner signal for "faith", the only strategy available to us to reach God, who's only discernable characteristic is absence. I read in Matthew's gospel his record of a statement Jesus made about our soul-life. "Whoever seeks to save his life shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for my sake shall find it". 16:25)

As for the veil, Matthew reported in ch.27 "...the veil of the temple was split in two from top to bottom, and the earth was shaken and the rocks were split, and the tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised...." What a TV documentary! Apparently only the High Priest could enter the veiled "Holy of Holies", once a year after extensive purification, on pain of death. Christ, by forming in us through our faith, has relocated the holy of holies to our innermost place where we can go, forgiven, purified, with complete immunity. It is there that I experience this love relationship.

About the Veil Paul, fired with his dramatic interface with Christ sometime after Christ's "ascension", wrote "....whenever Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart. But whenever their heart turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. And the Lord is the Spirit; where the spirit of the Lord is there is freedom. We all with unveiled face, beholding and reflecting like a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory...".

The veil on the heart is the death shroud of the ego. Throw it off!