Daniel O'Sullivan
FAITH. Oil 60X50”
This fifth painting in the series is a departure from the others because it introduces the Theological Virtues, gifts of Grace, which can transform and reorient the moral virtues. The light source is now its own subject, and the background has been pulled away and draped over what is literally the underlying reality. The tacit is now focal, as Polanyi might say.
Belief is accepting testimony as true on the authority of its witness. It is called Faith when the witness is God. Then the testimony is called Revelation. I used the uncovered wooden cross supports to represent revelation. The hatchet, destructive rationalism, is attacking this revelation, which, ironically, holds it up. The shepherd’s crook, hacked off from the crozier, hangs from the other side of the wood and forms the question mark of Doubt, the weak case. In the mirror, a furtive hand tries to dislodge the diminished miter from the book, an image of modernist theological reflection.
The strong vice of Idolatry is belief in a false god. The phrase “the rule of faith” suggested to me the device of a crooked ruler to represent Idolatry. The cock is reminiscent of St.Peter’s denial, but with its size and plumage and swollen breast, it seems like a good figure for Pride. The partner of Pride, Worldly Vainglory, is the armature, partly showing behind the cock. The apple, of course, recalls the Fall of Man. The antique crutch, often a negative metaphor for Faith, reminds us, as Peter Geach noted, that often we must weakly rely on Faith when we are too tired or bemused by an opponent’s arguments to do anything else. But crutches are also signs that miracles have taken place.
HOPE. Oil 60X50”
Near Lake Bolsena in Italy there is a Word War II cemetery I once visited. It was for British servicemen. An anchor was carved on each sailor’s gravestone. The first object I thought of for this painting was that anchor. It has been a favorite sign of Hope since St. Paul made use of the metaphor. He also called Hope a helmet. Hope is for Heaven.
On a wall in my studio there is a photograph of an ancient Greek stele, a memorial to a drowned warrior. In my painting the warrior is effaced from the stele, but his image waits on the tracing paper for its rescue. The rival vice, the wolf of Avarice, haunts the inside of the broken shield, attended by the constellation of the dragon, the mythic guardian of a treasure. The traditional sins against Hope are Presumption and Despair, the opposing vices in the scheme of this series. I thought it would be interesting to introduce secularized versions of them, so I propped the works of two philosophers up against a bookend, itself an echo of nineteenth century posturing. The shako on the crystal ball represents the claim of one of these philosophers to have grasped the world process and the grand march of history. The visage behind the anchor marks the other philosopher’s increasingly desperate program of unmasking.
CHARITY. Oil 60X50”
The lighting and coloring ally Hope with Courage and Charity with Justice. The images that came to mind to represent Charity were really images of love—the rose, the dove (Venus’s bird), the torch, the broken wing. The torso and its analogue, the guitar, are more directly about love. The rudder and tiller seemed to come closest to standing for Charity because it is about redirecting the will, or, as Dante puts it, “setting love in order.” I tried to reinforce this idea by having some of the objects facing the light and others turned away from it partly or completely.
The bench keeps dividing the paintings in two, and it is important to bring the lower part of the painting into play. The big sheets of wedding dress patterns and the hem marker are doing this here. I chose them because they can remind us of the parable teaching that without the wedding garment (Charity), there will be no admittance to the wedding feast. This lack of Charity, the weak case, calls up in turn the “sounding brass and tinkling cymbals” of Corinthians. There are two novels by the musical instruments. The “Fury” in the title of one aptly describes the shadowy profile of Envy—more accurately Invidiousness or Malice, the rival vice—behind Venus’s torso. “A Tale of Two Cities” is the title of the other novel and suggests Augustine’s vision of history as a struggle between love of the real good and love of illusion, the mirror, the strong vice.