Seeking

Like many paintings Jonathan Green has created over the past twenty years, Seeking interprets his experiences growing up in the Gullah community of Gardens’ Corners, SC. But the actual creation of this painting grew out of a more recent event in Green’s life, a visit to Mepkin Abbey, a Trappist monastery outside Charleston. Dom Francis Kline, then Abbot of Mepkin, took Green to see an unmarked slave cemetery on the grounds — grounds that could well have held the graves of Green’s ancestors on what had been a large plantation owned by the patriot Henry Laurens. Responding to the Abbot’s long-time wish for a painting by a major African American artist to commemorate the contributions of African Americans to the creation of Mepkin, Green undertook to create this extraordinary canvas.

Green presented Seeking to Mepkin Abbey on September 4, 2006 as part of a daylong celebration called “A Commemoration of Place.” In it Green has imagined humankind seeking in nature for the word of God. The painting captures a particular “seeking” experience from Green’s life as he shows a seated man or woman, back to you looking into a deep, dark forest rimmed by the crimson of a setting sun. Within the forest are two more shadowy figures: one is the spirit — the one who comes to guide you through your life — and the soul, which for Green and among the Gullah people is immortal and pre-exists any incarnation in the flesh. As a younger person, Green went through the “seeking” experience as a part of his church tradition. Youths at about 12 years of age were sent into the forest alone to seek the word of God. During the day, while they were at school, they wore a string around their forehead to let others know they were seeking. After many nights in the forest, the “seeker” met with the church elders and recounted the thoughts and visions he or she had experienced. If these were judged to have been fruitful, the elders accepted and baptized the seeker into the church.

In Seeking Green presents us a metaphor for life as a spiritual quest, a journey of personal discovery for each of us.