Three Worlds: Heaven, Earth & Hell
This painting took a while to paint; it has complexity and depth. The viewer has to take some time to pull it all in, but the idea for this painting only took a question from my youngest son to take life.
On our way home from church one Sunday, Elijah, our youngest child leaned forward from the back seat and asked, “Dad, have you ever painted the three worlds?”
We had been to see several really interesting Marvel movies together including Thor and Avengers: Infinity War, and I thought at first he meant something from those movies like Thor and Asgard or the many worlds visited in Avengers: Infinity War. But, it was a simple question from what he has learned from being in church, Confirmation, Youth and Sunday School, he meant Heaven, Earth and Hell.
The very next time in my studio, I selected a tall and narrow canvas and divided it into three sections. I did a small sketch and came up with the main compositional element designed to draw the viewers eye in certain directions and in certain ways to get them through the main idea of the three worlds that I had in my mind once he asked the question. Stay with me a little longer. I made a zig zag shape taking through the three sections.
In the upper right, I placed God, from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel fresco, in the Creation section, where God is reaching down almost touching his beloved creation, Adam. He reaches down into the Earth section (mid left) of my painting and instead of Adam, he is touching “the second Adam”, Jesus. Jesus being here on earth in human form, his death and resurrection were known from the beginning but took place on our earth at a specific time on earth. Pretty monumental to us here on earth.
At Jesus on the cross we see Judas on his hands and knees reaching down in the the third section, Hell, to get his silver for betraying Jesus, but in this painting, he is drawn to and receiving his silver directly from the Devil himself. This chain of real events and compositional elements takes you quickly through all three worlds. I used the “serpent” facing back to the left to push your eye back into the painting again. After that, you are on your own to look where you want and take in all the detail.
I mixed the use of famous and more obscure vintage and renaissance paintings with elements/characters/figures that I just made up in my imagination (like Judas – just added it from imagination of a man on his knees and what that may look like).
A few more details you may want to look for:
In Heaven, I have Peter & Paul in the middle under Jesus’ feet. The Jesus with the nail holes in his hand with the earth as his foot stool came from an older painting called Christ the Redeemer. I added Elijah (after the our son for sure – as he sparked the painting with his question) on the left, Abraham is hard to see but just to the right of the two angles looking down at the central figure of Jesus. Moses is on the right with the ten commandments behind his shoulder.
In Earth, I painted themes like Love, Music, Worship, animal and plant life along with us humans – but a tank for war, people fleeing and those of us that are simply just too busy to really think about anything more than our immediate lives. I do have pieces like the flying German planes coming up from Hell.
In Hell, I worked in a mix of things that came to my mind along with references in the Bible about Hell. For instance, the Bible had Jesus saying “I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” AND “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” Some things there came from renaissance painting references as well as things that I personally consider evil, that have caused much suffering and unnecessary loss of life and the grief that comes from that.
Hope you will take the time to really study this painting and “thank you little buddy for the awesome question you asked that got this whole thing started!”
-Chris