The world feels like it is burning up at the moment: planes being shot out of the air, broken bodies tumbling forth; beautiful children being denied safe passage by my own people; other beautiful children huddling in terror as bombs drop from the sky; friends who I love , on the other side, living with a sense of doom and dread and I imagine moral ambivalence.
But what has particularly upset me of late is the terrible choice ancient Chaldean Christians have faced , convert or die by the sword. For all of my love of the blessed saints, I don’t want to see more made. These ancient peoples forced from their ancestral homes, their sacred churches now at the mercy of savage thugs (New York Times, source ) .
This print is for displaced ancestors of Christendom.
Agnus Dei II
2014
relief print on paper
9 x 12 inches
This unfortunate state has become a bit of an obsession for me. The heated rhetoric, is divisive and unhelpful , so much so my husband has asked me to stop speaking of the unpleasantness. So I turn to other means of expression, one of the most accessible, relief print. I am reworking my relief print Agnus Dei, this time with Gazan blood and Ukrainian fire. I need to rework a bit still ,a little too much indiscriminate crimson ; but given the amount of spilt blood, tears and broken lives perhaps the excess drama is right on target.
Pax vobiscum,
Lg
Boondocks Babylon 
it is overwhelming, and the print is an excellent expression of all of it.
i have been away, but didn’t want to miss your birthday!! it seems perhaps odd to leave words of cheer on this post, but i don’t want you to miss my hugs and hopes that you have a wonderful, lovely day!
zoe
Much appreciated my friend, my sister Kat chided me for being too morose on my birthday. I wasn’t I promise!
Happy you like it.
David ordered my press and a sturdy bench to house it;so within a few days I should be up and running with my own home press!
oh, that’s exciting!
i read your comment on your puppets’ post at clive’s–your paintings are wondrous, i hope that you know that prints selling over paintings is, i am 100% sure, a distinction based on price-point. both are amazing! please continue both!
i’m glad you celebrated well!
An extraordinary print Leonard, I’m a bit in awe of how much power and emotion you manage to compress into one small image. I sometimes feel so impotent in The face of all the hatred, violence and cruelty going on, but how much better to channel one’s feelings into a piece of artwork like this!