I couldn’t not paint this…It always comes back to this for me. It’s Christ, yes, but not as we usually see Him. The son, staring down at the father’s will. No fanfare, no halo, just sweat and silence and the weight of what’s about to be asked. And yet…I couldn’t escape the thought that in that clenched intensity, He was already carrying my family. Mine. Yours. Each of us folded into those hands like petitions He refuses to put down.
I painted Him in that moment in Gethsemane, when the world’s weight pressed so heavily He nearly broke. His friends…bless them…couldn’t even stay awake. He’d been betrayed, misunderstood, abandoned even by the father he was totally obedient too. And yet… He didn’t walk away. He stayed. He knelt. He submitted. On purpose.
Those clasped hands aren’t just prayer…they’re resolve. The quiet, steel-spined kind. The kind that chooses to carry pain so someone else doesn’t have to. I painted Him with warmth, with empty shadows, with luminous mortal flesh and bone and real weariness…because I wanted us to feel what it cost.
This isn’t turning water to wine. It doesn’t braid a temple cleansing whip, it quietly whispers. It’s the moment of quietest decision, most devastating act of love in all of history. And it felt important to show the cost. I hope when people look at it, hear the weight of the quiet that pressed in all around, the gravity of the choice, and the relentless undeserved kindness of it all.
Because He did it. A willing Son, who looks at the impossible and whispers yes. Willingly. For all of us. And honestly? That undoes me. Every time.
