‘Looking for Jesus in our time’
Kelly Latimore is an artist and iconographer from Burlington, Vermont
I STARTED painting icons in 2010 while a member of the Common Friars, a small monastic farming community in Ohio. My icons often mix classic orthodox iconographic imagery with figures representing the marginalised and the oppressed among us here and now. My image Refugees: La Sagrada Familia, in which the flight to Egypt is interpreted as Latinx immigrants crossing the desert, adorns the cover of Pope Francis’s book A Stranger and You Welcomed Me.
Another translation of the word “iconographer” I’ve heard is “depicter of life”, which I like a lot. The Church simply engrafted that word into its life. For me, what it is to be a good artist is attempting to become a more present person.
After graduating from college, I ended up in Athens, Ohio, and was a part of a small farming community, growing vegetables and food for food pantries. Putting your hands in the soil and weeding a bed of carrots across from a complete stranger, and the conversations that came out of that . . . I learned that the way we use things in the world is of spiritual significance.
It was a transition away from a spirituality of transcendence. Leaving this world to go be with Jesus (which is no way to live). It was more about engaging God in a physical incarnation in the world, about engagement, embodiment and communion, connection. If you’re looking for Jesus, go walk your neighbourhood and you will probably find him. It was a very profound time.
The focus of much of the iconography that I’m doing is based on looking for Jesus in our current time. Jesus said that he is to be found in the least of these and those who suffer. In 2016, when Trump was first elected, there was a lot scapegoating of immigrants’ being responsible for all the problems in America. This is unfortunately happening again.
My partner, Evie, asked: “What is an image we could make that would look like an icon but be the Holy Family today as Latinx asylum seekers or refugees, thinking about the flight into Egypt?” And so, I painted La Sagrada Familia, showing a family fleeing in the desert under the cover of darkness.
The only nativity images I saw [growing up] were of a white Joseph, Mary, and Jesus surrounded by the usual peaceful starry night. Something serene, with no indication of the difficulty of childbirth.
Over the past several years, we have tried to look at where the Holy Family would be today. When I lived in the inner city of Chicago, I met many homeless individuals who lived under highway overpasses for shelter. The following year, I created an icon I called The Holy Family of the Streets, depicting a version of a family I saw one winter sheltering under an overpass.
During the pandemic, many families — unable to work and make enough money — were evicted from their homes and forced to live in “tent cities”. There was a large tent city near Downtown St Louis, Missouri, when we lived there. People living in harsh cold conditions, with nowhere to go because many shelters were either closed or at capacity.
Many people in the tent cities, however, were helping to support one another. This led to an icon called Tent City Nativity. In the image, you see a version of Downtown St Louis, the star of “Bethlehem” above, and, in a makeshift tent, the Holy Family, with the newborn Jesus. Instead of the three wise men bringing gifts, it is fellow unhoused people bringing gifts of coffee, a blanket, and some soup cooked over a fire.
We also tried to use these images to raise funds for individuals in tent cities, and refugee and migrant services. In 2023, Red Letter Christians asked me if I could create a new icon, which was called Christ in the Rubble (see cover), which illustrates the prophetic message that if Jesus was born today, he would be born “under the rubble”.
Over the past year, Red Letter Christians [News, 11 January 2019] have sent more than $120,000 to Gaza and the West Bank for humanitarian relief and peacebuilding efforts. Individuals could receive a limited edition signed print of Christ in the Rubble, after donating $100 or more. The campaign raised more than $100,000 from more than 1000 individuals in less than a week.
Iconography has a rich and beautiful history and tradition. I now have a plethora of books of Orthodox and Byzantine iconography. When I get commissioned to create new icons, I am almost always looking back at the traditional icons. For Christ in the Rubble I looked at the traditional orthodox icons with buildings in them, and traced and included many of those different buildings in the icon, but, in this case, they were cracked or on fire.
In the traditional nativity icon, the Holy Family is in a cave. In the new icon, the “cave” is now the space where the holy family is sheltering, under the rubble. The Star of Bethlehem is now almost barely visible through smoke.
It’s always my hope that these icons can be viewed in communities. I have received a lot of push-back painting the Holy Family as people of colour, or as migrants and refugees. Icons can be a window to the divine, or to the life of Christ, Mary, and the saints. Icons can also be iconoclastic, however, as in “breaking images”, because there is something about the image of God that will always be resisted. There is something about the image of God that will always be crucified, because unfortunately we continue to crucify each other.
We continue to fail to see the “imago Dei”, the image of God, in one another. We need each other to help us see. When a community observes an icon that may make some people in that community uncomfortable, there is potential for some important conversations to happen. The word “communion” basically means “a mutual participation in”. A mutual participation of viewing art can lead us to new understandings of ourselves and our neighbours. It can lead to “a conversion of sight” As the artist of these icons, I hold out hope that people can open themselves to new images of God.
kellylatimoreicons.com
‘Street art, for me, is a way to connect
The Revd Hana Amner is Rector of St Mary’s, Dodleston, and All Saints’, Higher Kinnerton, Chaplain of Bishops’ Blue Coat C of E High School, Chester, and an artist known as “Creative Priest”
I HAVE always been creative, but my art became noticed by others when I first began training to become a priest. I found the [training] process inaccessible in many ways (it has come a long way since then). Coming from a working-class background, I didn’t fit the traditional mould, but I discovered a deep passion for theology and a creative way to express it.
The Creative Priest“God with us”: A modern telling of the nativity by Hana Amner, the “Creative Priest”
I started illustrating theological concepts, because I recognised that studying theology is a privilege. I wanted to make these ideas accessible to everyone; so I turned them into art. I’ve never stopped.
Through my drawings, I’ve worked to reimagine the true essence of the nativity story. For me, Mary and Joseph are refugees, walking down the high street, desperately seeking help. Having experienced homelessness myself, I know how it feels to be ignored by society, to feel invisible in your time of need.
In one of my illustrations, a homeless man offers his tent to the young couple. It’s followed by a moment in history, a pause, where all the people who had previously ignored them — city workers, refuse collectors, everyone — kneel before the newborn King Jesus.
I also see the wise men differently. In my artwork, they are young people, just hanging out. I believe the younger generation, with their openness and curiosity about spirituality, are often more in tune with what God is doing and willing to respond courageously.
Street art, for me, is a way to connect with people who wouldn’t normally engage with the Church. By retelling the Christmas story in this way, I hope to share both the biblical message and the larger truth of Jesus among us. God is still with us — that’s eternal. And that’s the purpose behind the art I create.
My faith has been integral to my art. When I came to know Jesus, at 17, I struggled with the traditional rhythms of prayer and discipleship due to the chaos in my life at the time. Creativity became my way of connecting with God, using my imagination in prayer and scripture. Later, I discovered Ignatian spiritual practices, which influenced how I engage with faith through creativity. I use watercolours, line work, and layered compositions in my art, and then digital drawing to finalise it.
The nativity scenes I grew up with were very polished and neat — also everyone was white. They didn’t reflect the rawness and challenge of the story as I see it now.
I’m drawn to Bible stories that we think we already know inside out. The nativity, for example, is often told without much theological depth. We overlook details like the time it took for the magi to arrive, or the real struggles Mary and Joseph faced. I wanted to dig deeper and present a more grounded, challenging interpretation.
Over the years, my work has found its way into people’s homes, on church walls, and is used in theological lectures and as reflective prayer materials. Right now, my focus is on school chaplaincy, and my first year as a rector. I’ve been working creatively with students, however, which has been a wonderful way to integrate art into worship and everyday school life. In the future, I’d love to illustrate books.
Last year, at Bishops’ Blue Coat High School, we created a drama piece inspired by my nativity art for Chester Cathedral’s carol service. The students brought the artwork to life, imagining Mary and Joseph as refugees today, ignored by Christmas shoppers and helped only by a homeless man. It highlighted the generosity of those who have little, and challenged the audience to reconsider how they would respond.
I want people to feel inspired to reimagine scripture and consider its relevance in their own context. Jesus’s life and ministry turned cultural norms upside down and inside out, just as it did more than 2000 years ago. I hope my work encourages viewers to ask what Jesus would be doing today, to challenge us to live the life he calls us to.
‘I have tried to paint more diverse images’
The Revd Ally Barrett is Associate Vicar of Great St Mary’s, Cambridge
I’M NEVER really sure whether to describe myself as an artist; I loved art as a child, but fell out of the habit for a long time. I’m so glad I rediscovered how much I love painting, and it’s becoming a more and more important part of my life.
I’ve been ordained for over 20 years, which has included time in parish ministry, as a chaplain, as a children’s minister, and working in theological education.
Ally BarrettFrom Women of the Nativity by Paula Gooder
The process by which I make art is very closely related to my faith: I experience painting as “quality attention paying”, which is spiritual and theological and embodied in nature. When making religious art I am very aware of how the process of painting makes me ask different questions of biblical texts and theology, and allows different resonances and connections to emerge.
The first nativity painting I did as an adult was a huge depiction of Mary breastfeeding. I was working in theological education, and it was the first year for a long time when Christmas wasn’t the busiest time of year, but I was very tired after a very demanding term; so I shut myself in a room on Christmas Eve and painted all day. I think this was the moment I realised how important painting might be for my spiritual and general well-being.
The painting became all about Jesus’s tiny starfish-like hand resting on Mary’s breast to get the milk flowing, and her completely focused gaze on him. I’d breastfed both my children, and I think I was drawn to painting a really personal, human picture of my relationship with Christ. As a reference image for Mary, I used a photograph of a Syrian refugee from a charity page.
I generally work in acrylic paint. It dries quickly; so mistakes can be painted over, which suits my quite amateur process. I have also dabbled in making my own paint: I gathered charcoal and charred wood from the Easter fire, ground it in a pestle and mortar, and mixed it with acrylic gesso, and used this to paint a pietà and a Stabat Mater.
The paint was very unruly, with lumps and bumps, and little splinters, which were very tangible as I also chose to use my fingers to paint both images. I found it very moving (emotionally and spiritually) to work with the paint with my fingertips in depicting the body of Jesus in his mother’s arms. It was a very embodied experience for me, and it made me think afresh about how, as a priest, I start every Lent with an act of finger painting. Dust and ashes hold together life and death, sin and forgiveness, creation and destruction. I’d love to paint a complete set of stations of the cross and of the resurrection using the Easter Fire paint.
I don’t usually sell my paintings, but I try not to keep them either: when they find a home their new owner is encouraged to make a donation to a charity that’s important to them or that’s connected with the subject matter. A few are in churches or cathedrals; many have found a home with individuals. Some are for book illustrations. Increasingly I am fulfilling commissions; so I already know where they’ll be going. I like the idea that they’re out there doing good in some way.
I feel that there is more than enough “white Jesus” and “white Mary” in the world; so I’ve tried to paint more diverse images, and connecting the holy family and nativity story with current situations in the world. People are sometimes surprised, but nobody’s ever really objected.
When looking at my take on the nativity, I’d like the viewer to feel invited in, to connect what they are seeing with their own experiences (in life and faith), and to pay attention to the story in new ways. I guess I’d like them to feel something of the love of God in Christ.
Women of the Nativity by Paula Gooder, illustrated by Ally Barrett, was reviewed in our Advent Books pages, on 25 October
reverendally.org
‘I want the viewer to talk about the reality of other people’s Christmas’
Pete Codling is a contemporary artist based in Portsmouth
DRAWING has always been a big part of my life, and who I am as a person. I like the notion that everything I create is all one lifelong large drawing, and only finished when I am.
Certainly, there is a lot of faith involved in the creation of art and the belief in why you are making these artworks. I grew up a Catholic, with all the aesthetics, beauty, and magic associated with that. But with age and education I also grew uncomfortably into the knowledge of the Crusades, the Inquisition, the missionaries, and colonialism, the disparity and inequality illustrated by charities for starving African children, the child abuse on our own doorstep, and the mega corporate business and branding of God, and of other people’s gods, and the similarities between all the “other” religions.
The family Christmas tree and decorations would go up on or around my birthday, 15 December. Being the “artistic child”, I would oversee the nativity scene and arranging the figurines, making a diorama known as a Belén (Bethlehem), or crèche, with an open shed or cave made from a shoe box and twigs. I have fond memories of those toy-size classic figurines.
Pete CodlingNativity by Pete Codling
I was not aware until a bit later in life of the awkwardness of the light-pink-skinned, blonde-haired, blue-eyed baby Jesus and his white family and friends. It was saved only by the mysterious singular beauty of the ebony face and black hands of one of the wise men, or magi.
I grew up in the ’70s and ’80s in working-class England. It simply wasn’t questioned, in the same way that the biblical stories, however grand and magical, were not to be questioned — as someone much cleverer than you and your family believed in them for a good enough reason. Becoming an artist is, or at least should be, the antipathy of all that.
On Christmas Eve, at midnight mass, or Christmas morning, going to “see” the baby Jesus, with near-half-life size realistic figures — the same size as me — that seemed to have so much more presence. They had a beauty, clearly carved and cast from true artistic vision, and therefore somehow imbued with some kind of magic. To me, at least, in that time of childhood “naïvety”, they seemed to be my first notion of “art”, or at least “sculpture” or statues, in scale and quality, rather than toys.
This drawing was created in response to what was happening in December 2015, a new form of Christmas television entertainment, in Syria. It was perhaps the first time a 24-hour news commentary was run on the destruction and fall of Aleppo, acclaimed as one of the oldest of cities in the world.
Unfortunately, the war-torn city image is universal, so could be any “theatre of war”. It juxtaposes all the religions: the godlike figures in the sky refer vaguely to an ancient Islamic depiction of Allah with a head of flames, and the traditional old white male notion of a Christian God. Like Santa, St Nicholas and his pagan counterparts. A nice old white guy.
Other stakeholders or characters, for example in the nativity drawing, are the three magi being represented by the West, the Middle East, and the United Nations, all holding their mobile phones up — it is not clear if they are taking photos, searching for a signal, awaiting a message, or sharing the horrors online. The traditional manger or crib of the Christ-child is a flat-screen TV, reflecting the news — perhaps news of a second coming, or the Armageddon preceding. A humble Mary and Joseph kneel around it.
This drawing won first prize in the 2016 Chaiya Art Awards. It inspired the next body of work, the Naïvety Drawings, that have full-size characters from the nativity. The Holy Cow and the Donkey from this series won the London Biennale 2021.
On the whole, I have had an overwhelmingly positive response to the work, and people are happy to engage in the conversations it sparks with other viewers. I want people to recognise the main characters, but to hold their thoughts on the context I have placed them in, the battlefield ruins of the city, for example, or the symbolism and references I have used from art history, mythology, and politics.
I want the viewer to stop and think, to talk about the reality of other people’s Christmas. Even if they aren’t celebrating this Christian festival, it has become an international season of good will, decoration, harmony, and holiday. It is perhaps a bit Dickensian in the Christmas Carol allegory, or, in some cases, hardcore satire or political cartooning of familiar iconography. It is my Christmas card to the world.
petecodling.com