40 days and 40 nights

Here's a quick little linocut that I did yesterday of loaves of bread in a desert. It is inspired by the story of Jesus wandering the desert for 40 days and 40 nights, of what Catholics now celebrate as lent.  At one point in the story, the devil tempts Jesus saying “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread.”Jesus says in reply, “It is written: One does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.”  

It is easy to fall prey to temptation.  Sometimes it is not a cut and dry as black and white, good and evil.  The things which tempt us can seem attractive, appealing, or even rational. But, in reality, they look as out of place as loves of bread in the desert.  It is a very interesting contradiction because bread is a symbol of salvation and sacrifice though the Eucharist, but in this context, it is a symbol of temptation. This piece is meant to serve as a reminder to the things which tempt us on a daily basis.

I would like to expand on this idea with a few different modes of output.  In the realm of printmaking,  I would like to make a larger, much more detailed woodcut of this image, with multiple colors. and possibly incorporate some sort of text which goes along with the whole theme of temptation.  Also, I would like to rework this image to make a continuous matrix.  It would be interesting to print the image side by side, and have all the images connect to make one large desert. I like the way which the image almost becomes abstracted when juxtaposed to its reflected image.

 
This image would also make a great oil painting with a Dali -type surrealist imagery and soft impressionist like brush strokes and color. The image which I photo shopped really grew on me. It almost reminds me of Monet's haystack series.  Portraying the bread in different lights and seasons could be very interesting in the context of a stream of consciousness and what it means in terms of temptation.