Advent is a time of waiting, and reflecting. My husband and I were honored to be invited to create a series to accompany a Christmas Concert at a local church on the North Shore of Massachusetts.
As the weeks leading up to Christmas are the busiest time for us this was no easy feat, but we enjoyed conceiving contemporary images that would bring Biblical stories a little closer into our frame of mind.
I chose to name each of my pieces after the verse that they are illustrating or reflecting on. Since Advent is a time for preparation, I decided that the majority of my pieces should be depicting Old Testament predictions of the coming of Christ. As I did some research, I found that the image of the lamb as the only source of color in my grayscale pencil drawings illuminated the images with the fore-telling of the lamb of God who was to come.
The first image is a pattern of men walking in lines with their hands on each others shoulders. This piece reflects on Isaiah 9:2, “Those who have walked in darkness have seen a great light.” The darkness of the generations of men who have to hold onto the person in front of them to know where they are going is juxtaposed with the color of the lamb half hidden in the bottom right of the picture.
In this series I chose to depict the lamb in blue, which in traditional Christian iconography is the color of human life. This is why in many icons Jesus is depicted in a blue robe with red over it,  since in his deity Jesus took humanity upon himself. Since Christ came to be the sacrificial lamb
The second piece in the series depicts a verse from Ezekiel 34. God is the shepherd of Israel, and in this verse it says “you are my sheep.” This piece refers to God looking after his sheep and caring for the injured and weak, but also looks forward to the shepherds who were encouraged by the Angel in the Gospels to “Fear not.”
The composition leans on the pattern of the sheep in the background, interrupted by the large shepherd in the foreground clothed in contemporary jeans and t-shirt. At his side is again the symbol for Christ, in blue.
FPC Christmas Concert - Friday, December 20th at the Ipswich High school Â
This year, the FPC praise band will be presenting Andrew Peterson’s Behold the Lamb of God: The True Tall Tale of the Coming of Christ for our Christmas concert. It will be held at 7:30 p.m. at the Ipswich Middle/High School in the Performing Arts Center on Friday, December 20th. Cookies and punch will follow.