[See part 9]

As I conclude this blog series, I want to thank you for your journey with me into the process and execution of the illumination process of the Four Holy Gospels project. The entire series of original paintings will be exhibited from July 8 through September 18 at Museum of Biblical Art (MOBiA) in New York City this summer. So please stop by!

When the exhibit opened at Dillon Gallery December 2010(by the way they have now released the exclusively hand re-touched archival prints of the frontispieces), one of my favorite images to speak about was the image on Luke 18:4. The image is of five vertical lines, done with sumi ink, and then this “beautiful mess” at the bottom. 

Law and Grace

Whenever there is intense conversation between Jesus and the religious Pharisees (which is quite often!), I wanted to visually convey the tension between law and grace. As I prayed about it and mulled over how to do this task, I remembered my Nihonga training as a National Scholar in 1986, when they had me draw thousands of lines. It was a tedious act of drawing one line after another, and then moving on to copy ancient scrolls by hand. The professors gave me many types of sumi ink (slate and slabs that gets rubbed together with water to create sumi ink), papers and brushes to try. What I was learning was a hands-on, tacit knowledge of materials. In order to master Nihonga, I had to gain this first hand knowledge of working with various materials.

I thought of this discipline as an ideal way to depict this tension between law and grace, and the black and white lines as a way to visually capture the laws of God. I realized it was also a perfect vehicle to depict Jesus who came to “fulfill the law and not to abolish the law.” (Matthew 5:17)  

As part of the “line drawing exercise” back then, I learned to pour color pigments into the lines while wet and to control the breeding (loosely called Tarashikomi technique). Jesus, in coming to fulfill the law, in this sense, stayed “within the lines” but poured his divinity (gold) and himself (vermillion, his own sacrifice).

 

I started the Luke 18:4 page on the left drawing the black and white lines, representative of Jesus’ debate with the Pharisees in the chapter. But ink accidentally dropped on the upper right corner of the image. I was going to start over, but then I read the bottom portion of the words next to the image. It is a scene when children come to Jesus.

The disciples are trying to keep the children away (I imagine them thinking that “this is a serious theological discussion, and kids should stay away!”), and of course, Jesus surprises them once again. “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder then, for to such belongs the kingdom of God.” (Luke 18:15)

The “beautiful mess” on the bottom, done with extravagant minerals, gold and platinum, followed. To paint is to be a child of God, depicting grace that flows out of the Laws of God—boundless, explosive, and playful.

The Four Holy Gospels (Crossway) is for sale at our online store. 

Makoto Fujimura is an artist, writer, and founder of International Arts Movement. He has had over 100 exhibits worldwide, and from 2003-2009 was Presidentially appointed to the National Council on the Arts. An ordained elder (on sabbatical) at Redeemer Presbyterian Church, Mako and his wife, Judy, raised their three children in lower Manhattan.