ThisIsChurch.com Stations of the Cross

Stations of the Cross by Michael Freeman

We are pleased and proud to be able to exhibit these fourteen stations of the cross painted by Michael Freeman. ThisisChurch.com wishes to express grateful thanks to Michael Freeman for kindly allowing us to display his painted stations. They are extraordinary, beautiful and provocative paintings which assist us in our journey of the cross. You may click on any of the pictures below to see the picture in greater detail.

Michael Freeman

My 'Via Crucis', the Fourteen Stations of the Cross, germinated slowly and as a result of my recurring impression that much modern painting of the Christian subjects thoughtlessly re-uses Medieval and Renaissance imagery without deep conviction. I eventually painted my 'Fourteen Stations' between 1976 and 1978. I painted them as I felt them, but to bind the set together I used a musical device of the two contrasting ideas stated, (in the first two pictures), and then developed.

They are painted to focus contemplation on the subjects referred to, not to illustrate those subjects. The changing colour and in one case the absence of the motif in the top part of the picture is significant.

These additional pictures may give some indication of the manner in which my work made for me the decision to paint the 'Fourteen Stations.'

1. Triptych  The temptation of St Anthony, 1969

2. Holy Wounds, 1970

3. The Old Feuds Renewed, 1971

4. Hortus Conclusus study IV, 1973

5. Cave Spirits, 1974

Michael Freeman b1936, Visionary painter, draughtsman, printmaker and adult educationalist, born in Swansea. Having always lived near the sea, except for London in the 1960's where a post on a Fleet Street newspaper 'nearly stifled creative work, he found that the rhythm of the tides deeply influenced his work and outlook.