‘THE VICTORY’
PAINTING STORY
The Birthing stage
One day after many promptings for me to do artwork for the Lord I prayed and said yes again and I asked Him to show me what He wanted me to paint. To be more precise I told Him that I would not paint again until He showed me. A few months later, One morning in my studio it happened, the Lord showed me the painting and I saw that it was very large!
I was amazed to see the idea of a crucifixion, as at that point, it never crossed my mind that I would ever paint it. Two days later a fellow artist in my area called me up, being overwhelmed in the process of moving to a smaller space. Having to clear out his large studio he offered me 2 identical size blank canvasses, they were enormous! And wow now they were mine! Yes together measuring 2 x 3 meters. I was amazed how things came together, thank you Lord, so here we have the material and the idea.
Did He now have our full attention, oh yes!! I have done many, many paintings but not ever have I been inspired like this. Little did we know what was still ahead!
The next thing was finding a suitable Jesus model. He needed the hair and beard, and be the right age too! And low and behold in our very small seaside village we found him! We got introduced to a man who lives right in our town and looked very much like Jesus, yes!! And ,sure enough he was keen to pose as our Jesus Model, halleluya!!
We got going with our first photo shoot. Yes and it was here that my lovely wife, Janine applied her many years of film industry skills, as she was working as a special effects make-up artist. This time she was faced with the need for dressing up wounds of our new model for the photo shoot.
One thing I knew, the depiction was to be realistic to the Word. Was it easy to paint, no not at all. Normally painting inspiration to me, was always inspired from aesthetic beauty, and this was so difficult to say the least, painting the One who saved me, my Lord, in the state of bloody woundedness, dirty and broken was very hard. But I clearly understood it was part of the process. As I sensed that the shear scale of this work is a call from our Lord, a message of amplification for people to behold what He came to do for us.
He did not do it all, just for us to look the other way from the suffering and the blood. Having made this artwork, I actually believe our saviour is so very present with every single heart and pair of eyes that is confronted with this very hectic scene, He would not ever miss a single moment..
The message of the artwork
This painting when it was done stood in my studio, all of its 2 x 3 meter size like a screaming did not have a mild effect on people statement encountering it. There was nothing like it and we did not know what to do with it. So yes, we waited on the Lord, He ordered it, so He will take it further.
The Joy magazine did a lovely article on the painting. After about 6 months,at a social gathering, we buped into Ilze Kleyn, she was the then owner of “Die Boomhuis” the christian art gallery in Stellenbosch in the Western Cape, South Africa. She invited us that very night to bring our large painting to be part of a pesach exhibition that was to open a month later. Right there, I felt the Father say to me that this is what He wanted.
The exhibition and the sale
The exhibition happened and was lovely and about a week after opening night the gallery called to inform us that the Victory painting had a buyer, and that this person would come and see me. The gallery owner also mentioned that the previous night, she heard our Abba father inform her that someone is coming the next day to purchase the painting.. We all stood amazed at all of this and so the circle was completed from concept to final purchase.
‘The Victory’ oil painting is owned and on permanent display in the retreat center called In Harmonie, situated on the wine farm La Motte in the outskirts of Franschoek, Western Cape South Africa
Prints are also available of this painting
Testimonies I received from personal encounters of “The Victory” painting
