Are you looking forward to Easter this year? Have you got your eggs and rabbits all in a row?

In 2020 I was in London visiting friends just before the outbreak of covid. I went to the Victoria & Albert Museum and made a sketch of the "Lamentation over the Dead Christ", a ceramic sculpture made approx. 1510 - 15 by the Workshop of Andrea della Robbia. 

It was all extremely worrying, and I was relieved to get home safely. 

However, then the news started coming in of how the priests giving the last rites to the covid dying were dying from covid themselves. It was extremely harsh in northern Italy. Something made me want to paint a picture of this sketch, working from my small sketchbook. I did not take any photos - and I don't work from photos. 

So this came to be. My version of "Lamentation over the dead Christ". Painted in oils on canvas. 

You can watch the painting progress in a short film I made

The most interesting thing: the cross that appeared on Christ's chest was not planned. It just came along all by itself. 

This is for all the dead and dying - in war zones, in places where they are trying to squash women's power.