Weep Not

24×16 inches, oil on board, 2023
Original Sold

This painting attempts to captures the story of Christ addressing the women mourning him as told in Luke 23 and expands my attempts to visualize Christ’s last week in mortality. He had just suffered the rigors of The Atonement, Judas’ betrayal, the arrest, the flogging, the incessantly mocking crowd, the temporary desertion of most of His disciples, and the challenge of carrying his own cross, and was walking toward a certain, horrific death on a cross. (I chose to ignore the blood and gore that must have been a part of this event, trying instead to focus on the message.)

As the story says,

And there followed him a great company of people, and of women, which also bewailed and lamented him.
But Jesus turning unto them said, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children.
For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck.
Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us.
For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?

Luke 23:27-31, KJV

How Christ could have kept His mission in mind, teaching those following Him even though mere steps from His death, is beyond me, and is another testimony of His greatness.

Marilynn Shawcroft, a good friend of mine, enlarged my understanding of the event when she commented on my painting: “The emotion on the faces of the women touches me. Anyone that has seen a loved one suffer and struggle, whether it be a physical, emotional, or spiritual struggle, get what these women are feeling.” (quote used with permission)

Process

Click the images below to see details of the painting’s progress.

I have wanted to paint this scene for years, so when a potential book publisher contacted me recently with prompts for this scene, I dived in with enthusiasm. I worked up several new concepts in my sketchbook, eventually focusing on the women, leaving Christ’s largely silhouetted foreground features as a secondary impact – an additional gut punch – to highlight their grief. After all, it was their sorrow that prompted His warning, and I wanted to create an image that women today, with their own many griefs, could relate to.

Although I had previously compiled several photo montages of grieving women to paint from, I chose to explore how artificial intelligence (AI) could handle the task. I used Midjourney, having already found that the program can quickly produce concepts and final images of astounding variety and quality, greatly aiding my creativity and productivity. Still, getting the program to image my vision can be frustratingly tough, so, as usual, I culled several useful shots and composited them in Photoshop. I then printed out the result in black and white and traced it onto my painting surface, completing the painting over four half-days.

Whether the painting is used by this publisher or not, the effort was satisfying, and it is now available for other uses.