Paul

I keep trying to lift away from earth – in the Mary green and purples, and in the mid-aughts when I integrated raw cmyk digtal prints with pastels. But I always get drawn back by that elemental palette: give me that old-time religion.

Here’s Paul who I golem-like made to be a companion (a concept I sensed, but is beautifully written of by Leo Bronstein in Kabbalah and Art). The temporary-housing sukkos/tent-maker – isn’t that the way? – burning-with, preaching jabbed and risen.

I used Thomas Cahill’s research, right, into the earliest depictions of Paul – Cahill makes a good case that these are accurate and distinct portraits, not Platonic-form-glorifications, as was the Greco-Roman wont. And about Paul’s character, I remembered the phrase, “by any means possible.” That was how Mark Nanos calmed me down about the mixed metaphors of Paul’s writing.

The Dura-Europos wall painting, Moses Drawn from the Water is the backdrop. He was thrown in the water (assumed) for dead and lifted to a position in the royal family. It is interesting to me that the Dura painting (c. 230) shows the princess doing the lifting of Moses, unlike the Bible’s servant version. It’s folk-telling. The same folk-telling that made it into the ’90s Dreamworks cartoon.