The new series at GHCC is titled Who Do You Say I AM? (Knowing the True Jesus) and is a study into the many facets and ideas that revolve around this person. My first thought when I heard the title was of a mosaic. There are so many ideas about who Jesus is/was that people thoughout history have had, but there are so many aspects of who Jesus is that he himself gave us descriptions of. This series is going to explore both: who others say Jesus is and who Jesus says he is. A mosaic seemed like a logical way to communicate this. All the pieces come together to form a picture.
So then the question became: What should that picture be? I started with an image of Jesus because I wanted it to be very clear who this series was about. I chose a traditional Jesus look so that it would be obvious it was Jesus. But I didn't want to just have a picture of Jesus be the main image because I felt the image needed to communicate more. I decided to infuse the image with a lion because it allowed me to express so many of the ideas I had in my head. Now the image of Jesus had both a gentle and a ferocious side. It had a mysterious and abstract quality.
Jesus is called the Lion of Judah in Scripture and lions are kings. And of course, CS Lewis used the image of a lion to represent Jesus and I have always loved that imagery. The quote from Mr. Beaver in Lewis' The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe came to my mind. When asked if it was safe to meet Aslan the lion, Mr. Beaver replied, "Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.” I wanted this image to try and capture that idea.
I also decided to use only triangles in the mosaic as a subtle nod to the Trinity. So the whole image is made of triangles forming the face design. I've never tried drawing in this style before so I did a lot of research on the process and it was really fun and challenging.
I'm really excited to see where this series goes. My whole Creative Team at GHCC worked hard to put together a stage design that incorporates the artwork, which you can see below.
