Commission for Mission

"VOICE BY VOICE"

© Michael Garaway 2016

81.3 x 108.2 cm Acrylic on prepared mountboard

This is a diptych study piece based on the Lord’s Prayer, presented as a reflecting response to a more dystopian text. The latter follows the same rythm as the Lord’s Prayer but expresses a more negative worldview, perhaps rather like Ecclesiastes - toil, trouble and vanity.

Thus the title of the piece is “Voice by Voice”, the negative voice on the left, the voice of prayer on the right.

(Extract from The Book of Common Prayer, the rights in which are vested in the Crown, is reproduced by permission of the Crown's Patentee, Cambridge University Press.)

"HAGIAPOLIS"

© Michael Garaway 2017

51 x 101 cm Acrylic on canvas

The title comes from the Greek words for "Holy City" based upon a New Testament passage in the Book of Revelation, chapter 21.

Friday Process - a suite of four paintings on the theme of The Cross, as per each Gospel account.

There is no depiction of figures - not the body of Jesus or the robbers who died with him, or the onlookers, or the soldiers. These images present a moment of silent darkness after the event, perhaps late on the eve of the Jewish sabbath. The bodies are gone from the scene, and the visual array of items bear witness to the common, almost workaday process of execution, as it might have been from a Roman soldier's point of view. Thus the title  "Friday Process", followed by the name of the gospel on which the image is based.

Each gospel account differs in details, and this is apparent in the images, so that Matthew alone counts the money that Judas received, and John alone speaks of the spear thrust into the side of Jesus to certify His death.

Viewers who look at these images with a New Testament to hand will be equipped to investigate the other details.

The ladders are implied in the taking down of the body after death.

"STEPEREGRIN"

© Michael Garaway 2018

51 x 101 cm Acrylic on canvas

Eighty eight hours over six weeks, a step pattern combined with a diagrammatic motif, suggestive of mazes, wandering pathways, maps, circuits, and with hints of landscape, this is "Steperegrin".

It combines three grids at varying angles to form the motif.

The title refers to the use of a celtic step pattern, and also to an older term "peregrinate" or "peregrination", which came to mean journeying abroad, hence the link to ideas of pilgrimage.