Crucifixion
St Peter and St Paul's
Buckingham Parish Church
The Crucifixion
2018 - 2021
"The scale of the challenge resides in both the weight of religious art and the great paintings by Velasquez, Titian, and Rembrandt offering a response to a supreme challenge of form and content allied to a carefully considered response to the physical structure and nature of space." Gino feels this to be an important reason to make this painting.
Art Installation, Artsday and
Stations of The Cross
in Three Acts
2019
Gino created a one off installation and exhibition alongside a performance collaboration with pianist Maria Sappho and author Professor Robert Cumming
Stations of the Cross is a three act concert including music, conversation, performance, live drawing, sound and light. Act 1 and Act 3 premieres the depiction of the Stations of the Cross in a collaboration between Gino and New York pianist Maria Donahue (Sappho). Act 2 takes the form of a conversation where Gino and Professor Robert Cumming discuss Mathias Grunewald and Diego Velazquez Crucifixions and there meaning to a modern audience. Asked by a member of the audience, "What relevance does the Crucifixion have today?" Gino related Grunewald's plague depicted Jesus and the potential for a widespread virus to occur at any time in the future, irrevocably changing the world. A few months later the world was in the middle of a Covid pandemic where fearful and frightened societies across the world began shutting down.
During Artsday Gino demonstrated his process for beginning a portrait . Anne Exelby a volunteer and longstanding parishioner at the church sat for the demonstration. Later Anne visited Gino's studio where he finished the portrait. Albeit wiith a long break between the first few sittings and the last due to the Covid pandemic.
Painting the Crucifixion 2020 -2021
Gino started the painting for the chancel in the summer of 2020 by this time he had decided on many aspects of his painting. Gino worked from imagination and used his many years of drawing the human figure to decide on the tensions he wanted in and out of the figure in the painting. Although figurative this is a conceptual work which adopts profound beliefs and uses colour and light to articulate the pain and suffering and the robes of authority used as both a way to mock and as power to destroy belief. Jesus is Mediterranean and his moment of passing is one of understanding and recognition that we are all here looking for, meaning in life and death. He sees us and we see him. Gino uses colour vibrations as Matisse or Rothko might but his are imbued with notions of abstracted sound and frequency to code meaning and to offer song connecting with the large organ situated next to in the painting. His vibrations are the opening and connecting notes of the atmosphere and light in the church. The band of light running down the canvas represents the presence of God in the church and the moment the thunder speaks at Jesus crucifixion. The light and dark of man is represented in the cross which is also serves as a landscape.
Due to the ongoing pandemic and the flood from the River Ouse on the early morning of Christmas Eve 2020 when Gino's house and studio were inundated with flood water. the painting needed rescuing from Gino's studio and was subsequently stored safely in Buckingham Parish Church until Gino could restart work on the painting in August 2021
Installing the Crucifixion 2021
Official Ceremony by former Archbishop Carey 2021
The Thunder Speaks
Listen to the
thunder speak and the moment of Christ's expiration and renewal.