RESURRECTION

A LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST

TWELVE PAINTINGS BY CARL LAZZARI

A HANDBOOK
 RESURRECTION:
A LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST

TWELVE PAINTINGS BY CARL LAZZARI

THE HANDBOOK
German National Library Bibliographical Information
This publication is registered as German National Biography
in the German National Library; detailed bibliographical information
is available on the internet under http://dnb.ddb.de

ISBN-10: 3-8306-9507-1
ISBN-13: 978-3-8306-9507-3

4
FOREWORD by Archabbot
Jeremias Schroeder OSB
Carl Lazzari paints the Gospel of St. Ottilien
When I recently got a chance to read Carl’s account of
his first contacts with St. Ottilien, going back to 1994, old
memories stirred: memories of those enthusiastic volun-
teers from Oxford who set out across Europe in two bat-
tered old Ford buses in order to spread light and joy to
the Balkans, of that elderly gentleman in their midst – Carl
– who seemed to share that youthful zeal but combined
it with a mature wisdom which made his dedicated en-
volvement all the more impressive, and of the first con-
versations about his projects and ideas, in which my own
role was much less significant than is now being made
out.
Carl Lazzari set out to paint a life of Jesus at St. Ottilien. He
conceived a cycle of 12 pictures, and he conceived them
afresh, without going back to old masters. Carl wrestled
with the life of Jesus and was unable to leave off.
Nine of the twelve scenes are set in St. Ottilien. This is
perhaps the greatest challenge for us who live in St. Ot-
tilien. As monks we deal daily with Jesus: we pray with
his words, encounter him in many ways, both symbolic
and sacramental. Our monastery’s walls are decorated
with Jesus images spanning several centuries. Carl’s “Life
of Christ”, however, confronts us with a Jesus who is thor-
oughly modern. He is meeting our contemporary com-
munity. Carl teaches us the reality of that saying in the
gospels: “Where two or three are gathered in my name,
there I am in their midst.”
In his rule St Benedict urges his monks to sharpen their
vision. They are encouraged to look beyond the superfi-
cial and to discover Christ where he is easily overlooked,
among the guests, the old, the infirm. Carl helps us to do
this. He has discovered Christ here in St. Ottilien, and in
places which surprise and even embarrass us… On the is-
land in our pond the Lord appears even more lonely than
he once did in Gethsemane.
Throughout all of this we feel that our place, too, is Holy
Land, a place where Jesus can be encountered. We wish
St. Ottilien to be nothing else, and that’s why I am deep-
ly grateful for this “Gospel of St. Ottilien” which we have
been given.
INTRODUCTION by Carl Lazzari
Before giving detailed information about each individual
picture in sequence, it is necessary, as a non-Deutsche-
speaking painter from England, to recount and explain
my curiously eccentric personal involvement with this
great Benedictine monastery of Saint Ottilien in Bavaria.
In May 1994 I was invited to conduct a short residency
at Oxford University’s Magdalen College. I gave two lec-
tures - one in the Ashmolean Museum, the other in the
College’s Oscar Wilde Room, and, in addition, tutored
several drawing sessions in Magdalen’s splendidly floral
gardens. Unanticipated, I also painted an oil portrait of
a distinguished American Rhodes Scholar, Sabina Alkire,
whom I’d not met before. During our portrait sessions I
discovered that she was organizing an imminent humani-
tarian expedition by road across Europe into a Jugoslavia
being ravaged by the murderous Bosnian War. The prime
aim of this expedition was to visit dispossessed refugees
in their makeshift and often grim camps... and especially
to work with the ever-increasing numbers of orphaned
children. By strange coincidence, I was currently art-
ist-in-residence at Saint Alban’s Roman Catholic Primary
5
School in Newcastle upon Tyne, in northeastern England.
As Visiting Fellow to the Music Department of that city’s
elder university, I was also assisting a second year Japa-
nese student, Orii Ishizuka, in music therapy to severely
handicapped youngsters in Bleach Green Special School.
Having an awareness of being inexorably gripped by Fate,
and somewhat fearfully, I offered my services to Alkire’s
venture as an artist possessing extensive experience of
working with children. Due to my involvement, as both
Director and one of its performers, in a public concert at
The Gulbenkian Theatre, I was unable to start the trans-Eu-
rope journey from Oxford. Instead, the morning after the
concert I flew directly from Newcastle to Zagreb, where,
at an airport crowded with enormous UN transport and
military planes, I was safely collected by the Reverend
Jonathan Sedgewick, chaplain to Magdalen College, who
drove us into Croatia’s noble capital to be united with our
comrades-in-aid.
And so began the summer which changed my life...
On our physically-weary, emotionally-exhausted, return
trip to Oxford, Sabina Alkire, who had twice previously
been into war-torn Bosnia, had thoughtfully arranged a
brief ‘holiday’ for us: we stayed for two recuperative nights
in the monastery of Saint Ottilien. (Needing to report our
experiences, as I recall, to the UN in Geneva, Sabina had
been obliged to leave our group at Trieste.) But now re-
covering at Saint Ottilien, my younger colleagues wished
to spend their ‘free’ day in Munich, which none had previ-
ously visited. When they asked me to join them, and feel-
ing a little guilty - because as a team we had indeed shared
so much in sorrow’s adversity - I demurred, observing that
I already knew Munich, a fine city, but had never before
actually been in a monastery. At breakfast Pater Jeremias
Schroeder came to ascertain and if necessary enable our
needs for the day. My comrades indicated Munich as their
6
destination via S-Bahn from Geltendorf. When I commu-
nicated my interest in the monastery, Jeremias promptly
closed his office and most generously gave me a three-
hour walking guided tour of the entire monastic com-
plex. It was the beginning of an uncommon friendship
now lasting twelve years. During that summer afternoon
I made some ink drawings and a couple of watercolours
of Saint Ottilien’s environs. Next morning after breakfast
and as we were preparing to recommence our long trek
to England, at his polite request I showed my modest art-
works to Jeremias who immediately asked if he could
make copies for monastic publications. I was honoured
and delighted to comply.
Thereafter, in 1997 I was invited to be Saint Ottilien’s art-
ist-in-residence for the autumn of that year. This period
saw the production of two oil paintings - one a portrait
of the then-Archabbot Notker Wolf OSB, the other of an
evening interior in the archabbey church. I completed a
small suite of watercolours, a substantial collection of col-
oured drawings on A3 black paper, and many, many char-
acteristic A4 ink drawings.
In 1998 Jeremias Schroeder was Socius, or assistant Nov-
ice Master, with a group of about twelve monks ready to
embark on a circa-100 kilometre Italian pilgrimage in the
steps of Saint Benedict from Subiaco to Montecassino. He
wrote me in England enquiring whether I was interested
in, and able in time to join the pilgrimage as its visually
recording artist. I was, and I did. We were away for about
ten days. It was a sublime experience for me... and not
without humour. As our minibus began the final ascent
of Montecassino on which Benedict’s imposing abbey is
eagle-perched, without warning, an enormous thunder-
storm suddently exploded atop the mountain. It was a
cataclysm of Wagnerian proportions... verily a Gotter-
dammerung! Jeremias, driving, called over his shoulder,
“It’s you Carl - God’s just realized that you’re not a Ben-
edictine!” Much laughter in our packed vehicle! When
we eventually returned home to Saint Ottilien - and yes,
indeed, it felt like that for me too - Jeremias and I shared
a quiet coffee the evening before I was due to fly to Eng-
land. Our conversation went something like this: he, “Will
you come back to us?”; me, “Just give me an excuse.”; he,
“What about painting some big pictures for us?”; me,
“What sort of pictures?”; he, “A Life of Christ.”; me, “I’d love
to, but you know that I...”; he, interrupting, “Yes, you’re go-
ing to say you’re an atheist, which I think matters not at all.
Your strict Roman Catholic education by nuns and Jesuits
might appear to have a purpose after all. Perhaps God re-
ally does have a plan for you.”; me, “OK, let me think about
it. How many pictures?”; he, “You decide.”; me, “Twelve -
for the months of the year here at Saint Ottilien... it’s such
a wonderful, seasonal place. But how big?”; he, “You de-
cide.”; me, “Each canvas six feet square (180cm x 180cm)
similar to a group I’ve been working on in England... OK...
yes, Jesus Christ at the Benedictine monastery of Saint Ot-
tilien. I’ll send you a detailed proposal from England. Thank
you, Jeremias.”; he, “Good. And thank you too, Carl.” (These
words are not exactly verbatim, but, as I’m sure Jeremias
would agree, they are true in their contextual spirit.)
And that was eight years ago. For eight years these pic-
tures laboriously gestated, patiently shaping themselves
in my mind. Ghosts have become paint. There have been
unforeseen problems. Not everything has gone accord-
ing to plan. Mais, c’est la vie! I arrived here in December
2002 to commence this odyssey, the beginning of which
required the making of twelve stretcher frames - crafted
impeccably by carpenter Roland on a special jig in the
monastic woodworkshop. Meanwhile, I purchased good
quality Belgian raw linen canvas which I measured and cut
by myself on the floor of my bare studio before stretching
it on Roland’s frames. Each canvas received four or five
separate undercoats of acrylic-gesso priming. In total,
these preparations lasted several weeks. Then, of a sud-
den, the twin rooms of my humble studio were filled by
a dozen, enormous, flawless, white canvases beseeching
their first daubs of colour. The first brushmark was applied
in March 2003. Now, this day in May 2006, they are all fin-
ished. It’s worth commenting that my residence at St. Ot-
tilien has not been continuous. Usually at three-month in-
tervals I’ve needed to return for progressively diminishing
periods to what remains of my existing career in England
- those initial absences of two to three months whittling
down more recently to two weeks.
Included in the finished paintings are 135 portraits of liv-
ing individuals from at least eighteen different countries:
Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia, the Czech Republic,
England, France, Germany, Hungary, Japan, South Korea,
the Phillipines, Serbia, Spain, Tanzania, the United States of
America, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe - monks and nuns and
ministers, lay adults, Gymnasium students, and children.
There is a carefully chosen white chicken, a favoured ex-
otic parrot, a purring cat called Moritz, and Brother Franz’s
amiable Astra, the only dog in the monastery - all actually
painted in my studio. And without exception, amazingly
well-behaved they were!
(I have used above the phrase, ‘... of living individuals...’.
Let me explain that in The Raising of Lazarus, from their
black and white photographs precisely as displayed in the
monastery’s fascinating Museum, I have portrayed twen-
ty-five, now long-deceased, Benedictines from Saint Ot-
tilien and sister convent Tutzing who were trapped by the
Korean War. Imprisoned in North Korean concentration
camps, they were treated abominably. Indeed, several
were beheaded in savage martyrdoms. In total, therefore,
my RESURRECTION’s twelve pictures include 160 individ-
ual portraits - some in remembrance of the living and the
7
dead in Korea and Bosnia.)
To conclude this Introduction, a few of the strategic deci-
sions I made in England.
The principal portraits in the immediate foreground of
every picture may seem rather strange. One of my life-
time’s favourite paintings, of which I’ve extensively lec-
tured, is the Louvre’s Pieta D’Avignon by an anonymous
master. As was often a Fifteenth-Century European fash-
ion, in the lower left foreground is a highly detailed indi-
vidual portrait of a man in profile - odd, considering the
iconic almost Byzantine rendering of the sorrowing Mary
with the body of her son sprawled across her lap, and two
saints attending her lamantation. The portrait, of course,
is the donor of the picture, the wealthy man who paid for
the painting. He’s doing a sort of ‘blackmailing job’, plead-
ing possibly via prayer, “Merciful God, I’ve spent my good
money on this picture for You, please keep me a place in
Heaven.” And the reason he’s painted in such microscopic
detail is to ensure absolutely no confusion with the iden-
tity of any other rich man! After all, a personally accred-
ited place in Heaven is at stake! Fifty years ago as an un-
dergraduate art student on my first visit to Paris, I relished
the incongruity of the images - in truth, the man is not
an actual part of the Pieta which is simply, so to speak,
his devotional passport. By definition, the painting is ‘his’.
In England preparing this Saint Ottilien project, I decid-
ed that each of my canvases would contain such a ‘pos-
sessing’ principal portrait, but in a modern currency and
evenly balanced between male and female. In a sense, I
have made each picture for that person portrayed as its
principal.
Further concerning these principal portraits, with one ex-
ception they look either in threequarter profile to the left -
forwards into the story as it were - or are full-face and con-
frontational as with Catherine Stewart and Sabina Alkire.
8
These are decisions a painter makes in the interests both
of subject matter and the expressive portrayal of an in-
dividual personality. The exception mentioned above is
that of Jeremias Schroeder who, in the final picture, is pre-
sented looking right as if perusing the entire story back
to its beginning- a story commencing with an important
senior Benedictine woman and concluding with an im-
portant senior Benedictine man. Generally, the principal
portraits each required a week of sittings interspersed
with periods for my critical reflection - painting is as much
in the evaluative mind as in the dextrous hand. The princi-
pal portraits are approximately life-size. All portraits, large
and small, were commenced with brush and paint direct-
ly onto the canvas, and without preliminary drawings of
any kind. My public will make its own judgement. But I am
less interested in making a measured impersonal inven-
tory of someone’s face than I am in extolling their actual
living presence. Portraiture is a sharing experience. Less
than a couple of metres apart, painter and sitter spend
time in each other’s company. That is my valued reality.
Photographs were taken at intervals only to be studied
back in England; always at the finish as documentation;
and also to insure against accidental damage to the pic-
ture - one could hardly expect Ephraim Satuku to return
all the way from Zimbabwe simply to have his forehead
repaired! Aside from those who were acting a ‘theatri-
cal role’ - Sabine Riedelsberger as Mary; Pater Rochus as
Christ; Brother Bernward as John the Baptist; Pater Rudolf
as Lazarus - and allowing for my painter’s decision con-
cerning the direction of the head, (full-face, threequarter
left or threequarter right), the sitters for all portraits, prin-
cipals and others, posed as they pleased, in their varying
positions of comfort. How a person sits affects the poise
and angle of their head and expressively betokens their
character. This is my profession.
I determined to include direct and indirect references
to the Bosnian War because it so severely redirected my
personal and professional life, had caused my first visit to
Saint Ottilien as narrated above, and thereafter furthered
our progressive, purposeful relationship. In the context of
that war, people here portrayed represent physical, men-
tal, and spiritual healing. But also associated, are the crea-
tive arts of music, literature - both prose and poetry, the-
atre performance, film and photography, and, not least,
drawing and painting. Oxford’s Magdalen College, where
this story began, is personified by Sabina Alkire, Anand
Madhvani, Catherine Stewart, Christiania Whitehead, and,
in a lesser periphyral context, myself. Bosnia is actively
defined by Sabina Alkire, Ivo and Margharita Bakula, the
Humphries family - of St Alban’s R.C. Primary School, Orii
Ishizuka, Munelera Krdzic - forgive my reversal of her ac-
customed Muslim personal and family names, Anand
Madhvani, Catherine Stewart, and myself. In relation to
the Bosnian War, the monastery of Saint Ottilien clearly
features its humanitarian self by the persons of Ivo and
Margharita Bakula.
The settings. Excepting The Annunciation’s darkness, and
The Resurrection’s NASA-originated cosmic space, all other
pictures are set in actual local places. One, The Baptism,
looks across Starnburger See from the Benedictine sister-
convent at Tutzing. The remaining nine are in Saint Ot-
tilien’s various interiors and exteriors. My proposition is:
Jesus Christ - not haloed in flowing garments, but in dark
blue cotton jeans and blood-red top - if so dressed he
came here today... how would we be? On this Bavarian
afternoon how might you and I react? I was unconcerned
to repeatedly paint Christ himself. Deliberately planned,
only in The Baptism is his face clearly if enigmatically pre-
sented as both messianic Son of God and somewhat anx-
ious mortal man. Further, apart from two close-up back
views, Christ hardly exists except as a small distant figure.
We have mostly to discover his presence in the faces, ex-
pressions, and gestures of others around him... how do we
feel and react to his visitation? The interior and exterior
environments, their characters, colours and lighting also
express something about that particular event. Our eve-
ryday surroundings, our immediate landscapes, are em-
braced by Christ’s aeonic life.
And finally: the monastery of Saint Ottilien is a dedicat-
ed Christian community with a caringly benign mission-
ary role in our dual worlds of body and spirit. My pictures
are statements about Jesus Christ’s daily presence here
and now. Overall, they are also an accumulated family-
type factual record of many people who are this invalu-
able Benedictine community, which, with Bosnia, has
changed forever my own ageing span.
One decision, initiated with Esther Joas when I was paint-
ing her, was to invite all the principal portraits and sev-
eral others to write their own words for this book. Words
perhaps about being painted into that particular event in
Christ’s life. The seed of this idea was dormant in my mind
before Esther’s portrait sessions. But, during our lively dis-
cussions, her intelligent, articulate enthusiasm confirmed
it. I guaranteed no selfishly-prejudiced editing by myself
whatever the opinions expressed. Also, it was never my
intention that I should become a subject - but for some,
I am, and am duly chastened by what is said. I have no
doubt that these wonderfully direct, profound, essen-
tially truthful writings are the diversely glittering jewels of
this book. I thank you all, especially Esther who helped
trigger the idea, whose poetic, even psychological, offer-
ing of insight was the very first. Written in English too.
I hope these paintings ask beguiling questions of you. I pos-
sess not the Benedictine belief, Benedictine wisdom, and
Benedictine scholarship, nor indeed an ordinary human te-
merity to propose answers... I paint pictures. It’s what I do.
9
 The winter’s long path from Geltendorf...

10
... to the Benedictine Monastery of Saint Ottilien

11
 Brother Damian’s cobbler´s shop: my studio - in winter...

12
... and at midsummer

13
 My studio’s exterior door - with
chalked announcement that it
has been visited and blessed by
Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazzar
- the Magi, the Three Kings. (But
no - it was actually a becoped
and beaming Pater Gallus with
his two white-surpliced and
candle-bearing acolytes!)

14
Once upon a time there
was a bare twin-roomed
painting studio with
twelve large unmarked
canvases!

15
In December 1993 I held a major exhibition of paintings,
drawings, and computer prints, in the Hatton Gallery of
the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. The centrepiece
of this exhibition was a group of thirteen square oil paint-
ings on canvas metrically similar in size to these of this
Resurrection series. At the heart of these big pictures were
six depicting the burning seacoast and river castles of an-
cient Northumbria - Dunstanburgh, Tynemouth, Wark-
worth, Bamburgh, Newcastle, and Lindisfarne. Lindis-
farne... ah, Lindisfarne... in the context of these Saint Ot-
tilien paintings how prophetic it now seems! Desecrated
and looted by Viking invaders, the Holy Island of Lindis-
farne was the site of an enduring Benedictine monastery
once described as the only Christian candle burning in an
otherwise darkened Europe. Daily, within their strict Ben-
edictine discipline of ritual and prayer, that monastery’s
monks produced the decoratively illuminated Lindisfarne
Gospels - generally acknowledged as one of the consum-
mate artistic and Christian testaments. Atheist now I may
be, but, I cannot suppress a sense of regional pride, may-
be of unmerited self-esteem, which, of a warm Bavarian
summer day, connects me from my native Northumbria
directly with this Benedictine monastery of Saint Ottilien.
But, as too often I’m prone, I digress.
For the catalogue of the Hatton exhibition, my long-time
friend, post-graduate Slade School painter, Courtauld In-
stitute Art Historian with many major publications to his
name, the distinguished international scholar, curator,
and lecturer, Professor Kenneth McConkey penned the
following foreword. I quote his words complete because
they are a professionally objective and succintly clear eval-
uation of the painter I was and more or less still am – the
artist who has produced these RESURRECTION pictures.
Kenneth’s reference to Stephanie Celino also has an apt
currency. Stephanie, then aged eight, was a pupil at Saint
Alban’s Roman Catholic Primary School in Walker, New-
16
castle upon Tyne - school of the Baptism’s Humphries. Po-
sitioned bottom right corner of this large square canvas
Stephanie was its only portrait because the entire paint-
ing The Young Poet Stephanie Celino was an accumulative
portrait solely of her. Compositionally speaking, therefore,
Stephanie was the forerunner of these principal portraits.
Further, and with a measure of pride, I add that Stephanie,
now a university graduate in Arts Administration, remains
a friend-in-contact at her family’s home on a lovely green
hill high above the River Tyne, where I painted a small oil
portrait of her only two summers ago.
FOREWORD by Kenneth McConkey
‘A favourite, much-quoted phrase, used by Duchamp to
disparage painting, was bête comme un paintre. In this
phrase he hoped to convey all of those sensory, emotion-
al and accidental attributes which removed painting from
the realm of pure thought. Painting should be at the serv-
ice of the mind. Since Duchamp’s time there have been
endless exemplifications of this attitude which led critics
like Peter Fuller to comment upon the arid conceptual
cleverness of much contemporary art making. For a time,
following his extraordinarily productive residency at the
then Newcastle Polytechnic, Fuller waged a campaign for
the return to painterly values.
‘Of course it was much more complicated than this in the
eighties, but the idea that painting might reclaim the ter-
ritory it had lost in the period of heroic modernism was an
important one. There remained artists for whom lived ex-
perience and the volatile mixture of memory and desire
were the essential sources for image making. Carl Laz-
zari is one of these. His series of large canvases based up-
on the castles of the Northumbrian coast, could, in their
scale at least - they are all six feet square - be derived from
the earlier years of minimalist abstraction. More accu-
rately, however, these Salon machines, contain a person-
alized mythology. In each case an ancient monument is
surrounded with strands of autobiography and romance,
and by indeterminate paint-marks drawn from a reservoir
of instinct and emotion. To some extent Lazzari discovers
what he is painting in the process of painting.
‘It seems extraordinary therefore that such an implicitely
romantic painter should submit to the discipline and leg-
ibility contained in the conventions of portraiture. Sud-
denly friends and colleagues pose in front of his pictures,
or are, in the case of Stephanie Celino tied into the con-
ceptualization. Life upstages the vainglorious parade. Am-
bition is transformed in the day-to-day experience in the
School of Music, Newcastle University, the primary school
at Walker, and the gardens of friends. There is no single
resolution of these strands, just the challenging thought
that painting can, and should be about them all.’
Apropos these references to her, two lovely verses, unso-
licited by me, written by that youthfully talented Steph-
anie, both of which, with others by her, were displayed
beside the Celino portrait in the Hatton Gallery’s Exhibi-
tion of 1993:
Stephanie Celino - aged eight
‘Carl Lazzari’s good at art.
Some’s by thoughts and some’s by heart;
Some of his art is put on high
And some of his art can catch the eye.
All of his art is lovely to see -
It’s an absolute delight, I’m sure you’ll agree?
Some of his art is sad and makes you cry.
Some of it is like an Autumn sky.
Some of his art comes to life on the wall...
You see the artist’s feelings if you’re big or you’re small -
All of the art was there one night
When the sky was black but the stars shone bright.’
Stephanie, thank you yet again.
17
THE ANNUNCIATION month: May

19
20
Principal Portrait: Mother Irene Dabalus OSB
Initially evolving the series in England, this is one subject I
wished not to paint. I could perceive no contemporary rel-
evance in the traditional image of that heavenly angel in-
forming a passively subjugated Mary that she was soon to
be the mother of the Son of God. Also, there was no obvious
method of booking the Angel Gabriel into my studio for por-
trait sessions! For so many years my close friends Professor
Kenneth McConkey and his wife Annette have been consist-
ant patrons, staunch advocates, and constructive critics to
my work, to my art. In earnest and repeated discussions re-
garding my Saint Ottilien pictorial plans, amongst other ad-
ditional considerations, they reconvinced me of the Annun-
ciation’s importance. Gratitude. My Amen to both!
Light - in its presence, and its absence - is a recurring theme
throughout these pictures. In Perceptions of Angels in History,
Clarendon Press 1998, Oxford University’s Regius Professor in
Ecclesiastical History, Henry Mayr-Harting, has observed our
progressive, ever-needing and always-changing definition of
angels and their function throughout the centuries. It seems
that all I have done is to substitute an evangelic beam of in-
tense celestial light for that traditional winged messenger. I
realized that such a beam would have to come from the top
right corner of this initial canvas: God’s Right - truly, God IS
Right. Also, I am right-handed; and left is sinister and there-
fore, in English at least, utterly inapproriate. This is the reason
why my pictures ‘read’ from right to left, from The Annuncia-
tion’s beginning to The Resurrection’s conclusion.
In late January 2005 the instantly helpful and, at times of cri-
sis, creatively-solving Pater Cyrill kindly drove me, my paints,
and this flawless white canvas to Rome. There, in her priory
north of the Vatican, I made this principal portrait of Phillipi-
no Mother Irene on an otherwise undeveloped picture. I am
grateful, therefore, for Mother Irene’s joyous personal trust, as
well as her community’s hospitality... hmn, those really great
lunches with local wine!
Sabine Riedelsberger was a Year 10 student at St. Ottilien´s
Rhabanus Maurus Gymnasium when later in that same year
I painted her in 2006 - carefully chosen as a most un-Pales-
tinian Mary. Sabine was extremely helpful, as together in my
studio, she and I created this pose for a ‘modern’ Christian
Mary trapped in God’s incandescent ultimation... but as an
educated, independent, thoughtful Mary for our time.
A little story I was told by... ssh! When the sisters in Moth-
er Irene’s immediate community heard that an English art-
ist was coming all the way from the Bavarian monastery of
Saint Ottilien to paint her portrait, they were thrilled. They
enthused their leader to have a mirror placed in her room so
that for this important portrait she could practise smiling! As
in a stern monastic room I write these words, indeed I smile
to myself. You see, in my long life, except for a little English
girl called Rachel Adams, I’ve never met anyone who so in-
fectiously smiles more than Mother Irene Dabalus.
Moreover - I suppose that when people hear of ‘a portrait’
they presume a modestly ‘normal and domestic’ size for
that picture. So imagine: it is a sunny day in Rome. Atop the
steps of the Benedettine Missionarie Di Tutzing, Casa Gener-
alizia, there is assembled an impromptu welcoming group
of Benedictine nuns. Pater Cyrill and I have just arrived from
Germany. Introductions and handshakes ensue. Then Cyrill
and I open the rear doors of our capacious vehicle. Carefully,
steadily, we bring forth a huge, shimmeringly white canvas,
and proceed to carry it towards their steps... O the widening
eyes, and, in my affectionate memory, at least one Benedic-
tine mouth opening agape in astonishment!
Ah, such simple everyday joys in this our speeding life
briefly shared.
21
 In Rome, in her modern Priory north of the Vatican, Mother Irene sits for my Annunciation’s portrait of her

22
23
SR. IRENE DABALUS OSB
The Annunciation Begins With A Fascination
I sense a three-fold ‘Annunciation’ in this painting.
The first is not depicted here but is surely Mary’s annun-
ciation in Luke’s gospel which is the painter’s own primary
inspiration. Since he intended to create an image in sync
with the present age, one need not expect the classical
portrayal of a Jewish girl at prayer and of a winged mes-
senger from above. We of course know the account of
their encounter from the evangalist’s pen - how the mo-
ments of tension and apprehension, the binary contra-
diction of no and yes, and finally of light, grace and assent
to God flowed into the heart of the one woman invited
to cooperate with the amazing work of God’s incarnation
in her.
The second is the central image on the painting, the ‘in-
ner annunciation’ drawn by the painter’s eye and hand. At
the centre of the canvas is a blonde girl with an enigmatic
pose, as she is caught by a flood of light, fascinans et tre-
mens, which she cannot quite elude. With a half-turned
shoulder away from the light, she gazes uncomprehend-
ing, almost with a frown, as Mary must have done in her
24
time. I feel the fascination that the image evokes. It is like
an invitation to launch on an inner journey whose risks
and turns one cannot quite grasp but must needs take.
The third is my own portrait at the lower right hand cor-
ner which betrays surely another ‘inner annunciation’.
I was sitting for a portrait whose totality was then hid-
den from me. The painter envisioned my portrait within
that of a modern annunciation setting which would still
evolve. As I then gazed with my inner eye into the emp-
tiness of a formless space, I thought of how God created
me in his image and likeness and how a human painter
would draw my image as he saw me. Looking at me thus,
I thought, would he be able to catch an identity, a direc-
tion, an outlook in me, borne of the shades and hues of
many divine ‘annunciations’ in my life as a Christian disci-
ple of Mary’s Son Incarnate?
Yes, the Annunciation does begin with a fascination, with
a relationship to which one brings all of one’s identities,
one’s everything, before this moment, in order to set out
on a quest whose terrain is uncharted and whose fron-
tiers are unmarked.
Rome, Italy May 2006
Painting Sabine Riedelsberger in my Saint Ottilien studio. A fine photograph taken by her mother

25
26
SABINE RIEDELSBERGER
It’s like the beginning of a novel.

When Carl Lazzari asked me in art class whether I would model for one of his oil paintings, I was willing yet surprised. Sur-
prised that he would ask me specifically. Without an accurate idea of what would happen to me, I went seven days later to his
studio near the school. That is, I fought my way there through a small snow storm which had settled over St. Ottilien. Covered
with snow and excitedly curious about what awaited me, I was greeted at the wooden door of Carl’s studio. “It is like the begin-
ning of a novel,” he said to me. Yes, that was exactly right. How many stories begin with a snowstorm or a thunderstorm? I
didn’t know, but I was very curious about what would happen in this story. After he had shown me his studio, he explained to me
how he imagined the painting I was to model for and showed me the other paintings in their various stages of completion. So
began my little story.

I visited Carl about eight times, and it was fascinating to see the painting in its original state; it also felt odd to know that this fig-
ure was both Mary and me. Slowly but surely the face took on ever more the form of Mary. When it was finally finished, I was a
little sad to go for the last time to the studio. However, in hindsight, it is a lovely story and a wonderful experience.

The End

Rhabanus Maurus Gymnasium, Bavaria May 2005

Following her brilliant clown-and dog act in the amazing Circus St. Ottilien - Sabine Riedelsberger!
The two kids are looking at her baggy red and white striped clown’s trousers and big boots. Here Sabine looks a
rather unlikely Mother of the Son of God. But every other day, she is such a bonny and winning Mary for our time.

27
 NINE OF MY DRAWINGS OF ROME MADE WHILE PAINTING MOTHER IRENE

Via Santa Sabina outside the Benedictine College of Sant’Anselmo

28
Benedictine Sister Maria at the age of ninetynine

29
 In a Roman morning’s distance across Anselmo’s gardens - St Peter’s handsome dome by Michelangelo

30
Piazza Navona: Bernini’s Fountain of the Four Rivers - with a disconsolate stall-seller, his dog, and pigeons!

31
 Chiesa Sant’Anselmo before Vespers

32
Tall palm near the Benedictine College of Sant’Anselmo

33
 Monumento a Vittorio Emmanuele - the ‘Wedding Cake’!

34
The apse of Chiesa Sant’Anselmo

35
 Monumento Mazzini - situated at the beginning of Via di Santa Sabina which leads
up a long and wearying hill to the Benedictine College of Sant’Anselmo

36
 THE NATIVITY month: June

38
39
Principal Portraits: Eleanor, Richard,
and Robert Humphries
In Europe, indeed in the entire world, all those thousands
of paintings of the baby Jesus in his manger-crib. No,
no! Surely not another! One dark English night, working
alone at my computer, I thought, ‘But what would the ba-
by see? Jesus born at Saint Ottilien - what would he see?’.
Additionally, if the folk of Saint Ottilien heard that Jesus
had been born there and then, what would they do? Yes,
they’d flock to the place, calling, “Welcome, Jesus”, “Hel-
lo, Jesus”, and, “Happy Birthday, Jesus”. Some would bring
gifts. The Three Kings might be Benedictines bringing
presents (individually chosen by themselves): Japanese
Brother Ephraim - the World; German Brother Andreas -
The Candle of Life; Tanzanian Brother Gregory - the fruits
of his country. Anno might be wearing his fire chief’s hel-
met, Clemens and Konrad still in their bakers’ white. Albert
and Otto playing their violins. Wolfgang sings to his gui-
tar. Up on the balcony of the farm building housing cat-
tle (yes, nearly a stable!), the gable end of which sports a
pair of agricultural murals, Wilfried periodically booming
his alphorn. On Ludwig’s shoulder a well-behaved parrot
from Ottilien’s aviary. Daniel with his specially selected -
only the best for baby Jesus - white chicken which sat in
his arms happily cluck, cluck, clucking, as I painted it in
the otherwise silent studio. The principal portraits are the
three younger members of the Humphries family associ-
ated with St Alban’s Roman Catholic Primary School where
I had been artist-in-residence for many years. I wished to
commemorate this school which, via its children, parents
and teachers, did much to assist refugee youngsters dur-
ing the Bosnian War. Hence it was my honour to depict
Eleanor, Richard, and Robert, whose written thoughts,
along with their parents’, follow in a moment.
To offer thanks to these fifty-one individuals who willingly
40
gave their endless hours to my studio portrait sessions, I
have somehow, perhaps laboriously, to name them all.
The trios of ‘English Humpries’ and solemnly attending
‘Magi’ are already identified. So, pressing on - from left to
right along the balcony: Lukas from Argentina, Angelika
from Serbia, Frau Polke from the station cottage - her sum-
mer plantings of flowers are absolutely spectacular! Ru-
dolf - ever-friendly vehicle mechanic (who skis too often),
Brother Wilfried and his sonorous alphorn, Xaver Bea, and
Gabor, from Hungary and from Emminger Hof’s monas-
tic restaurant, who kindly gave me a bottle of Tokay wine
one New Year’s Eve - when then we’d hardly met! On the
ground: back row, left to right: Brothers Ferdinand, Gott-
fried, and Robert. Pater Gallus holds a gift of colourful flow-
ers from his monastic glasshouses. Brothers Isador, Tobias,
Clemens and Konrad in their bakers’ whites - their fresh
bread is delicious! Brothers Xaver, and Irwin. Pater Gregor
- born in nearby Eresing... so, literally, the monastery’s ‘lo-
cal boy’. Brother Karl, and recently ordained Pater Tassilo
- I was present at his imposing church ceremony. Brothers
Stephan - helped bring the Satukus from Zimbabwe, Lau-
renz - skilled painter/restorer, Johannes - always of gentle
and saintly ambience, and Bruder Gunther who manages
the retail farm shop replete with the monastery´s excel-
lent cheeses, meats, sausages, and wines.
Above the head of Brother Daniel who holds the Babe’s
white chicken, is Pater Sales who invited me to his birth-
day party, and right from Sales are: Pater Herbert - based
in South Korea where perhaps I’ll be a painter; calmly-sen-
sible Veronika Dietzel who bravely volunteered to work
in a hospice for black HIV/Aids victims in South Africa’s
Zululand, and daughter to Gymnasium teacher Renate in
The Wedding At Cana. Brothers Augustinus, Hubert - for-
ty-one extraordinary years in Tanzania - his thick picture
books of personal, even historic memories are absorbing,
Dominikus, Norbert - also English-speaking ex-Africa and
we get-on fine, Richard, and Ludwig with, on his shoulder,
a favoured parrot which, from time to time, affectionately
nibbled his ear as I painted. Pater Wolfgang sings to his
guitar, as he does during the vital Youth Vespers held first
Friday of every month when, even in the thick-snowed
depths of winter’s January, the abbeychurch is packed
with people and filled with song. Claudia - sister to Sigi
of the coffee shop - (both speak fine English... thank my
heavens!) Ninety-two-year-old Pater Albert is playing his
violin - I’m told that earlier in his life he performed the
Tchaikowsky Violin Concerto in symphony concerts. Be-
tween King Ephraim and King Andreas is intensely hand-
some Winnie Satuku from Zimbabwe. Between King An-
dreas and King Gregory is financial expert Frau Helga
Bauer - an important woman with an office in the central
monastery. Between King Gregory and English principal
portait Eleanor Humphries is little Julia - younger daugh-
ter of Claudia.
Now we move back across the canvas to Daniel who
is indeed responsible for thousands of chickens on the
monastery farm. To Daniel’s left is the always smiling and
popular horn-playing postmaster Brother Adalbert, then,
Brother Otto fiddling West Virginian country music (and,
it seems, everywhere else’s too!) - his words follow soon.
Fire Chief Brother Anno is easily identified in his protec-
tive helmet. In fact the monastery’s fire brigade, manned
exclusively by monks, has a major regional responsibility
in this part of Bavaria which includes an arterial autobahn.
When I first came here, I couldn’t believe that a Benedic-
tine monastery would possess a fully equipped fire sta-
tion! To conclude: below Anno is Sigrid - ‘Sigi’ - sister to
Claudia. Not only is Sigi’s Coffee Shop a popular social
meeting place, but for uncountable early afternoons it
provided me not only with, ‘ein grosse kaffee und toste
mit mozzarella und tomate, bitte’, but also a quiet table
where for an hour or so I could plan, review, write, and
edit. And no, I’ve not forgotten you, dear Nina. Below Ot-
to’s fiddle scroll is Claudia’s older daughter, sister to Julia
and neice to Sigi. Nina and Julia each drew and gave me
a picture. Both are included here together with Nina’s po-
etic words written especially to me on a picture postcard
from sunny Italy. Thank you, girls. The Nativity is essentially
about the advent of family. Those years ago, in England,
I desired this somehow to be a family picture as well as
one of closely supporting community. Eleanor, Richard
and Robert, Winnie, Veronika, Sigi and Claudia, and Nina
and Julia - you have all achieved that for me. I’m very,
very grateful. A painter may be able to control his picture,
but not the external world he wishes to portray in that
picture.
CHRIS AND PATRICIA HUMPHRIES
Dear Carl,
We hope your visit to Rome went well and you managed
to transport the paintings back intact. We should imagine
that there was quite a lot of pressure to get things right
during the week so it was probably a relief to return to the
tranquillity of the monastery.
Well, now we’re back to normal. It seems ages since we
were in those peaceful surroundings, but our memories
are certainly fond and we have had much to think about
over these past two weeks. Robert has made a slide-
show of the pictures we took of the monastery and of
you painting the children, and will show them to his class-
mates next week so they can see how world-famous the
school is now. Richard and Eleanor have returned to their
hectic teenage lives, but they are quietly proud of their
involvement in the project and I’m sure they will be eager
41
to come back for the opening. We are persuading them
to put their thoughts to paper about their experiences
over Christmas and you’ll get these as soon as possible. As
for Tricia and I, we were surprised that our children’s por-
traits should be included with such brave and dedicated
people in the scheme especially as they occupy such a
prominent place in the Nativity scene. The results how-
ever are wonderful and we look forward to seeing the fin-
ished painting.
Finally, but just for now, we wanted to express our grati-
tude for inviting us to share for a while what is obvious-
42
ly a very special place for you. The atmosphere of the
monastery, the message of your paintings, and the kind-
ness and friendliness of the monks and staff there has giv-
en us occasion to reflect on our own lives and perhaps we
will be more pro-active and altruistic in the future. What-
ever happens we have had a marvellous experience, and
St Ottilien will forever be part of us.
With our very best wishes and hopes for the future.
Newcastle upon Tyne, England January 2005
43
ELEANOR HUMPHRIES - aged 15
Before we went to get painted I wasn’t looking forward to
it - nothing personal, it was just my parents are evil and tak-
ing me away from Newcastle at Christmas was like a crimi-
nal offence. I’ll admit this once however that being stuck
with my family for two weeks didn’t scar me mentally... not
too much anyway. I really liked Germany; it reminded me of
the fairy tales I heard in school when I was younger. It has
the Hansel and Gretal houses, the snowy landscapes, and
when you went for a walk outside of the monastery it was
so still and peaceful - apart from the sounds of me and my
brothers arguing over music of course!
There’s one thing that really surprised me about Carl: he’s
nearly as old as my grandparents. I don’t mean it offen-
sively; I’d known him when I was younger and it never
occurred to me that he and my grandma were from the
same era. He’s been to so many places too, done so much.
He had millions of stories to tell and maybe I learnt a few
44
things. The studio we were in was in this tiny stone house
with a thick wooden door; inside the walls were covered
in canvases and sketches. It wasn’t at all how I had imag-
ined it, but I liked to sit there and have my portrait paint-
ed as I looked around at the faces of those that had been
before me.
My parents loved the monastery; I think they just wanted
the quiet for a change. Munich wasn’t quiet. The only way
I can describe it in winter time is it’s like one of those cit-
ies you watch on the Christmas movies, with the wooden
market stalls and the clock in the square that had little
soldiers marching in a circle when it chimed. The people
were really friendly... well as far as I know as I can’t speak
German.
I can’t wait to go back and see the finished paintings when
we get the chance, or to return to Germany. I wouldn’t
mind living there one day. Maybe.
45
RICHARD HUMPHRIES - aged 12
At Christmas you want it to be snowy and picturesque
and all you get in Newcastle is rain and maybe some hail,
so going to Germany in the middle of winter wasn’t a dis-
appointment at all. It was hard to believe though that I
would be going to a Benedictine monastery by the Alps
to be painted in a big picture about Jesus. It’s hard to
believe even now. It’s like you go into art galleries and,
standing in front of the pictures, you look at the people
posing and think how sad they must have been to sit for
hours on end being painted but now I’m starting to think
46
like them - not sad though. I must admit that it was quite
exciting being painted watching the painting coming to-
gether and progressively looking more and more like you.
Then you think more and more, ‘That’s me, and I’m sitting
next to a Benedictine monk - I never thought I’d say that!’
The monastery was beautiful and a lot bigger than I had
thought, but Carl’s studio was a lot smaller with a strong
smell of turpentine. The best part though in my opinion
was Munich; I have to say it’s the coolest place I’ve ever
been to. But even better was travelling back to the mon-
astery thinking of what delicious food I would be getting
that night!
47
ROBERT
HUMPHRIES -
aged 11

When I heard we were

going to a monas-
tery to have our por-
traits painted I felt ec-
static because we had
never been to stay in
a monastary before,
and, when the Christ-
mas holidays came I
felt strange because I
had never been away
at Christmas. Eventual-
ly it was the day of de-
parture and I became
even more excited.

When Carl and Pater

Cyrill met us at the air-
port it was amazing because it was so white with snow
and it’s never like that at home in Newcastle. When we
arrived at the monastery it had started to get dark and
I noticed it was much bigger than I had imagined. I was
going to share a room with Mum and my sister Eleanor
and once we had settled in, we had the first of our lovely
teas with Carl, where we had homemade bread and Ger-
man food.
It was strange at first, but as time went by I got used to it,
and we were able to borrow bikes and play games in the
monastery grounds, which was great fun. We also went to
Munich on the train, where we saw the Olympic Stadium.
Back at St Ottilien we had some Heaven Cake at Sigi’s Cof-
fee Shop; it was delicious.
At Christmas the monastery was packed and we went to
Midnight Mass, which was very tiring and I fell asleep.
I was the last to be painted but it was worth the wait be-
cause I am looking around one of the monks in the cen-
tre; I have a cheeky grin on my face so you notice me even
though I’m smaller than my brother and sister. It was great
to be painted because I felt really special but also part of
something very important. I’m really looking forward to
going back to see the finished paintings one day.
all three youngest Humphries:
Newcastle upon Tyne, England January 2005

48
49
 The Humphries family complete: Mum Patricia, son Richard, daughter Eleanor, son Robert, and Dad Christopher

50
Gregory and his portrait

51
52
BROTHER GREGORY
A Case of Fate and Self-Examination
If you ask me if I believe in fate or destiny - I might just
answer that I believe in destiny - but, on the other hand,
quickly add that I also witness the working of fate. What
I mean is that things happen in a way that seems to fit
exactly, or, said in another way, in a way that seems to
portray that all was previously planned and arranged al-
though in reality it was never the case.
For the last two occasions I have played the part of the
African king in the Feast of the Epiphany in the abbey
church in Munsterschwartzach. I have done this with
pleasure and relish. I liked and enjoyed it because I felt
really powerful as a king and in control. Yes, one gets to
taste the majesty of being a king. During the course of re-
hearsals however, we were instructed how we (the kings)
should bow down and worship the King of Kings.. I must
say it was not an easy task, not the bowing and worship-
ping, but that I was worshipping a little baby. Why would
a powerful king like me bow and worship a baby who is
only a few days old? - Thoughts of an African king!!
In the middle of this scenario comes the invitation from
Carl to be painted, not as any other person, but as the Af-
rican king who came to pay Jesus homage. At first I did
not take it very seriously and thought - it is something
passing by, perhaps a whim. But when I sat down in the
studio and saw myself taking shape and becoming part of
this scene, the reality came to bear. I was no longer play-
ing king, but had actually become one. Fate had played
its game again. Fate had taken play and turned it into re-
ality. I was no longer a proud king but a humbled one. A
king before the King of Kings.
Then comes the question from Carl - What are you going
to present to the baby Jesus? It hit me again - this is real.
I was not carrying myrrh in a church play but was to give
Jesus something of myself, something real to me, some-
thing that would portray who I am and what I feel, some-
thing that would portray my African identity. I asked Carl
if he’d give me time to think (pray) over it. What would I
present Jesus? What would be worthy? First I thought of
very complicated items - perhaps this, perhaps that, what!!
What!! It did not take long before I chose to present Jesus
a basket filled with African fruits. Exactly that is. We have in
Africa fruits in abundance and this would have been ex-
actly the untold story of what the African king gave to the
childs’s mother. Fruit of the earth - Fruit from Africa.
That was not the end. I look at my painting. Yes, that is me
alright, but there seems to be more than me, something I
cannot understand. I look deeply, I look into my own eyes
- what am I thinking? Imagine, I am trying to tell from my
own painting what I am thinking about. I myself cannot
tell what I am thinking about. The eyes look straight back
at me, a certain seriousness, a mystery perhaps - I leave it
to you.
Wurzburg, Germany April 2005
53
54
BROTHER OTTO OSB
Formed by the Master
My experience with painter Carl Lazzari’s series The Life
of Christ at Saint Ottilien has not been limited to being
painted. I do appear in The Nativity wearing the partial
habit of a postulant because I was still in initial formation
when he was painting the third row of magi, shepherds,
neighbors, well-wishers, and the curious. At that time I,
like the picture, was near the beginning of a process. The
painting’s procession from a roll of linen, boards and nails,
tubes of paint, and a bottle of neutral varnish has ended.
According to the plan of the master painter, all the ingre-
dients have been worked together with saw and ham-
mer, grips and stretchers, sticks and brushes into the now-
finished Nativity. In that exact same period of time I have
completed the postulancy; received the habit and a new
name and a year-long monastic formation of a Benedic-
tine novice; and am now a professed monk.
Unlike the procession of Carl’s painting, my procession
from American layman to German Benedictine has not
ended. According to the plan of a novice master, the
canvas and tubes of my life have been worked over. Al-
though Father Rhabanus has not yet used a hammer on
me, he has plied the tools of encouragement, warning,
good counsel, enquiry, and the discipline of the Rule. He
has guided my daily life into a balance of prayer, sacred
reading, and work. The novitiate courses in monastic his-
tory, St. Benedict’s Rule, liturgy, canon law, scripture, mis-
sion, and chant have left their marks on me. Besides a full
habit and a new name, I now sport a different outlook on
the world. I am not like I was in Carl’s Nativity; and unlike
Carl’s Nativity, I am not yet finished. Father Willibrord, who
teaches some of the novitiate classes, was asked, “When
does one become a monk: upon becoming a postulant,
or a novice, or only after profession of vows?” He laughed
and said, “Never! The monk is an ideal which we never
fully reach. We can only try.” Carl’s Nativity will always re-
mind me of that. There I was a postulant. Was I a monk?
Am I a monk? Will I ever be a monk?
Carl was both the subject and the object, audience and
performer, of art during these paintings. In my case, he lis-
tened and painted while I fiddled. Such was also the case
with our oldest monk violinist, Father Albert; with singing
guitarist Father Wolfgang; and with Brother Wilfried blow-
ing the alp horn. At The Entry into Jerusalem Carl paint-
ed the two St. Ottilien Gymnasium students with cam-
era who have been filming him throughout this painting
series. He sipped a glass of wine with the guests at The
Wedding Feast at Cana. He has been eating the monas-
tery bread baked by Brothers Clemens and Konrad who
appear in their whites at the Nativity. Such subjection and
objection, give and take, ebb and flow have marked the
painting of this series. There were planned subjects who
could not come to be painted for numerous reasons, and
Carl fretted, fussed, worried, and resigned himself to the
disappointment each time. Unexpected substitutes al-
ways fell into place, and Carl fussed, figured, debated, and
delighted in the solution each time.
The ability to speak both English and German got me a
front row seat for this project. I was assigned Carl’s as-
sistant to help him schedule non-English speaking monks
whose faces were still to be included, to help him with the
gallery exhibit, and to gather writings of some of the sub-
jects (this one by me, for example) for the book. I hope
the paintings will have as positive an influence on other
lives as they are having on mine.
Benedictine Monastery of Saint Ottilien,
Bavaria May 2006
55
 NINA

56
NINA Nina, it’s really, really lovely. You composed it during your
family holiday in Italy then sent it to me Postaprioritaria.
Hallo Carl Hello Carl With my love and best wishes for your future, I thank you.

Bis bald Nina See you soon. Nina.

Her present to me: ten year old Nina’s galloping, ‘flying’
Auf die Erde fällt Regen Into the earth rain falls like horse - and a lovely picture it is.
wie Sonne. Auf der Erde ist sun. On the earth is shadow Thank you, Nina
Schatten wie Licht. like light.

Italy June 2006

57
58

JULIA
Eight year old Julia’s unexpected present to me - a lovely and friendly butterfly. Thank you, Julia.

59
CHRIST IN HIS FATHER’S WORKSHOP month: July

61
62
Principal Portrait: Roland Ward
One of the easiest compositions to decide. Joseph was a
carpenter and Jesus worked in his workshop. At the Ba-
varian monastery of Saint Ottilien, the Benedictine dic-
tum Ora et Labora is religiously sustained. Together with
farming, finance, and publishing, the various workshops
concerned with wood, metal, stone, water, and electricity,
are pivots around which daily activity revolves. As already
mentioned, it was in the woodworkshop that Roland pro-
duced his twelve excellent stretcher frames for these can-
vases. As my personal “thank you”, Roland is here por-
trayed with one wooden frame. Behind him is Brother
Paulus, the dignified monastic electrician carrying a torch,
and Brother Damian holding a black shoe. Damian is the
cobbler on the ground floor of whose Eighteenth-Centu-
ry house my painting studio is located. Centre foreground
is Brother Armin who is both carpenter and skilled stone-
mason. The workshop is in two adjacent rooms. I chose
this particular room because it is the more spacious, and
because of its staircase which ascends mysteriously to
an upper door... leading to... a tradesman’s entrance into
Heaven?
Old pianos are almost entirely of wood. For repairs they
would go to a woodworkshop. This is a portrait of an indi-
vidual piano in the retreat house. But why brought here?
For two reasons. One later mentioned apropos The Entry
into Jerusalem refers to Orii Ishizuka in Bosnia. The other
is to this picture’s principal portrait of Roland Ward who
for years has been a teacher of music and also répetiteur
to major dance and ballet companies in London. Roland
and I have enjoyed a friendship, unbelievably, of some
forty-five years. In 1960/61, as an ex-postgraduate from
the Painting School of The Royal College of Art in London,
one of the first oil paintings I sold, a Kew Gardens winter
landscape, was indeed purchased by Roland. O such af-
firmative support in days of insecure penury!
A final comment - on Roland’s shirt. Ah, Roland’s shirt!
As was my intention with all the pictures, this one was
generally ‘roughed-in’ and basically developed before
its principal portrait arrived. As with all twelve pictures, I
wished the finished principal portrait to influence directly
the development and conclusion of its painting, and not
be, as it were, a large postage stamp affixed to the com-
pleted composition. The general colour scheme was es-
tablished from two sources: the actual wood workshop
itself and my wish that it should exhude an ambience of
pastoral calm. This latter consideration was conditioned
by the fact of wood being from trees - from forests of
greens and browns, leaves and bark and ochred earth.
The first session with Roland went OK.
When my near-lifelong friend appeared for our second
session, I exclaimed, “Roland, your changed shirt!”. “And
what’s wrong with my shirt?” he parried. “Nothing at all,”
I replied, “It’s just... it is exactly the identical colours of this
painting which were fashioned before you came.” “And
so...?” he quizzically replied.
Ah, dear Roland, these lifetime’s diminishing months later,
I question, I wonder - of Fate and, perhaps, of Philosophy?
I think: therefore I am? I hope: therefore I believe? I am
whoever: therefore I am that whoever forever?
63
 The Workshop’s rudimentary beginning

64
Carl Lazzari finishing his portrait of Roland Ward photograph by Pater Siegfried

65
66
ROLAND WARD
Carl Lazzari and I go back a long way- some 40+ years
- when I was chief administrator in a well-known School
of Art in Surrey, south of London, and Carl was a visiting
lecturer there. I bought one of his paintings (my first pur-
chase of a work by a living artist!) called Kew Gardens In
The Snow, which fascinated me because, although ba-
sically an ‘Impressionist’ picture, it has flashes of colour
which I wouldn’t have anticipated in an essentially grey
and white painting. And this is something I still see in
some of Carl’s work now.
The beginning of our friendship was cemented when we
discovered that we were both pianists. I was blessed with
that gift which enabled me to become a teacher and to
take part in any music-making where a pianist was need-
ed. In later years, as répetiteur, I have become associated
with a number of major dancing schools in London. The
odd thing about this friendship is that, although it is so
long-standing, we have actually met only comparatively
rarely, and when we do, time seems irrelevant. Is this how
true friendship should be - or is!
By the coincidence of my daughter moving to Newcastle
upon Tyne, Carl’s home city, we were able to renew our
friendship in more recent years. It was then, I think, when
I heard for the first time of Carl’s Sankt Ottilien project.
I little knew then that I would be involved with this: so
when Carl approached me to ask if I would ‘be’ in one of
his paintings, I was very surprised, and also reluctant... es-
pecially when I became aware of the other ‘candidates’ -
the majority of whom seemed to me to have had more
interesting lives, and to have done so much more than I.
But friendship prevailed, and arrangements were made
for my visit and residence at the monastery.
I wasn’t sure what to expect - certainly not what I found
- an almost completely self-supporting community, the
size of a large village! And it was strange to see, at one
time, a cassocked monk in prayer, who, at other moments,
was playing football, milking a cow, or using a computer!
I am a disbeliever (as Jonathan Miller so aptly describes
himself ), but I was very influenced by the extraordinary
colour of the place - it breathed, for me, utter tranquillity,
so that I was often perfectly content to do nothing... by
myself. Doing nothing, at other times, was sitting for Carl
while he worked on the portrait. I can only say that, to
see one’s face gradually appear by stages on the canvas,
seemed to me a miracle, and certainly, a great privilege.
My residence at Sankt Ottilien was a quite profound ex-
perience; but unique, and so precious that I dismissed the
idea of another visit - lest, in some way, the experience
would be spoiled.
Happy memories though: particularly of my fellow resi-
dents; and the ‘Four Star Hotel’ accommodation of the
Guest House!
And what can I say of Carl and his mammoth task? Some
things - like music - can’t be put into words. Let all of us
who have been privileged to be his ‘artistic guinea pigs’,
just say: “Thank you”.
Guildford, Surrey, England March 2004
67
THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST month: August

69
70
71
Principal Portrait: Dr Catherine Stewart
A painting in my own rapture’s blue. From the Benedictine
convent at Tutzing, a view across Starnberger See looking
south east towards the Alps. Given a latitude of artistic lee-
way - maybe at sunrise. In his characteristic blood-red top
and jeans, Christ (Pater Rochus) stands knee-deep in the
lake. It is the moment before his baptism. In truth, John the
Baptist was very likely a long-haired, probably unwashed,
scary messiah emerging from the desert’s wilderness. As
with Mary, I have deliberately chosen someone who, in a
modern context, is precisely an opposite. Brother Bern-
ward has short-cropped blonde hair, seems archetypally
Saxon, and wears rimless spectacles. With water nervous-
ly cupped in his hands, he prays, “Dear God, do You really
wish this? Once it is done, everything will change... noth-
ing will ever be the same again.” And thus, for two thou-
sand years, it has been so. My original intention was for
John to be pouring water from a small container of some
kind. But, in preparatory discussion with Bernward, it was
he who politely dismissed that idea, pointing out that all
he had to do was to collect the water in his hands, and
thence to baptise. Wonderful - why didn’t I think of that!
In a sense, it was Bernward who therefore propositioned
these pregnant seconds immediately before the Baptism
- which I eagerly seized! Consequently, as this picture an-
72
ticipates the future - even if only by seconds, I have in-
cluded two future gospelled miracles associated with
water. One is the distant draught of fishes - those simple
fishermen with their unending harvest. The other, nearer
to us, is Christ walking on the water, which because he is
also a man, he does somewhat nervously. After all, walk-
ing on water has never been done... certainly not before
this particular Bavarian morning.
The principal portrait is of Dr Catherine Stewart - a friend
mutual to Jeremias Schroeder and myself. Catherine and
I have shared gruelling and yet also spiritually uplifting
long months in Bosnia, the Republic of South Africa, Zim-
babwe... and likely, also perhaps in Manchester’s Swinton.
This last-named is a friendly joke from me to her - shared!
Years past, in Manchester, she and I hosted her fund-rais-
ing church-based “An African Weekend”. This was a survey,
and a summary, of our combined experiences in southern
Africa for which I staged an exhibition of in situ drawings
and gave two slide lectures. Ah, the life-or-death rigorous
pressures of Manchester’s Swinton! O Catherine! But seri-
ously, as I write these words in friendship’s lasting affec-
tion, Catherine is one of the medical staff in a hospital in
North West Province, South Africa... a vocation and loca-
tion long-intended by her. This ‘ol’Carl’ is very pleased for
you, dearest Catherine.
Catherine Stewart ‘on location’ beside Starnberger See at the Benedictine convent at Tutzing

73
 The Baptism and Catherine Stewart - she and I both understandably anxious after our first portrait session early
in 2003 when, with a brief warning, she arrived... from France! Catherine’s was the first portrait, principal or other,
commenced and completed in the entire series. In retrospect, I think we were both extremely brave.

74
The Baptism developing

75
76
DR CATHERINE STEWART
Part Time Priests
Oh no! The old man has caught up with me and is ask-
ing for my homework by text message, is there nowhere I
can escape? Life is never peaceful when Carl’s around. He
makes me just that little bit uncomfortable and I become
all fidgety. Like when I was sitting being painted for these
‘pix’ (as we call them in ‘txt lingo’). All that honesty doesn’t
make for an easy ride either.
Carl came to visit me in southern Africa the last time I was
working here. Didn’t I tell him to keep ‘schtum’ about this
not-believing-in-God mullarky? ‘Cos in these parts the
existance of God is mostly accepted as an obvious fact.
So, for the locals, Carl presented a once-in-a-lifetime op-
portunity for evangelism. ‘Now they are getting their own
back for the less desirable aspects of missionary history,’ I
thought, as I watched several enthusiastic African Chris-
tians getting their teeth into the unbeliever. Wasn’t it just
like Carl to engage the guard on the overnight train from
Gabarone to Bulawayo on this very topic. Apart from the
guard having to go and blow his whistle a few times the
debate continued unabated until dawn.
My only real argument with Carl also started on board a
train in southern Africa. It concerns whether it is possible
to be a ‘part time priest’. Carl says no. He is on the side of
the total life-giving vocation which leaves no space for
any other role. I say yes. Non-stipendiary ministry, for ex-
ample, can be an aspect of a life which involves practising
another profession, which may itself be ‘vocational’.
We are still arguing, but Carl is winning at the moment.
He is proving his point by going to live in a monastery.
In fact, wherever Carl works, people will experience his
phenomenal commitment. I’ve become accustomed to
seeing his total engagement with those around him, be
they primary school kids, refugees, mixed-up university
students, Zimbabwean train guards, stick insects... I could
go on.
All this unashamed commitment is perhaps part of what
discomfits me. Another part is the very strangeness of art.
Getting down a tolerable likeness of something, I can un-
derstand. Even the fantastic weaving together of different
stories and significances, but the mysterious bit where
the paper or canvas seems to contain an expression of so
many intangibles... well it is just that, a mystery.
Another part of the pleasure of being discomfited by
Carl has been the manner in which he opens my eyes, to
look and find things of unexpected beauty in the scenes
around me. When he visited me here, I lived near a dusty
old bit of South African township perimeter. Whenever
he had the chance, Carl would take a little fold-up chair
out to where the plastic bags flap on the thorn scrub and
look. As far as I know he looked at insects, he looked at
the earth, and he looked at thunderstorms, until they got
too close and threatened to wet his sketchpad. Even the
onerous task of gravel road driving has been enlivened
by journeys with Carl. “There are so many colours!” he ex-
claims, and my eyes open wider to take them all in.
And how ridiculously overwhelming to be found sitting
there in front of a scene, which I haven’t yet seen, depict-
ing the Baptism of Christ. Christ’s commissioning, when
he steps up to take the job his Father has prepared for
him and begins his public ministry. An unconditional
commitment. Is the juxtaposition another way in which
Carl intends to win the argument?
Once, on retreat with college friends on Caldey Island, our
77
director gave us a prayer but told us not to pray it... yet..
The language of the prayer spoke of total commitment
to God, abandonment of self. She didn’t want us to hurry
into praying it, in case we hadn’t considered all the impli-
cations. It was suggested that a long term goal might be,
to become able to pray that prayer. Well, I’ve still got that
goal in view and I’m glad that on the journey I ended up
stumbling into one of Carl’s ‘pix’.

Tuang District Hospital,

South Africa St Chad’s Day 2006

78
79
BROTHER BERNWARD OSB tion comes to all people. In the end, John even lost his
head for that!
Prepare a Way for the Lord
Benedictine Monastery of Saint Ottilien,
When Carl asked me to pose as a model for Saint John the Bavaria May 2006
Baptist, I was taken aback, because for a long time I hadn’t
been able to warm up to that camel-cloaked, grasshop-
per-eating ascetic whom the Bible portrays. But as I stood
there with Carl painting me ever more into the image of
Saint John baptizing Jesus in the Jordan (for whom Fa-
ther Rochus was the model), I formulated some thoughts
about the original scene. I kept recalling a statement from
sacred scripture which I shall somewhat liberally quote
and which is constantly encountered in the Advent lit-
urgy: “The voice of one calling in the desert: prepare a
way for the Lord...” There it was--a word I could identify
with which linked me to John the Baptist. I realized that
here was exactly why I have shaped my life the way it is:
formed by prayer and work in imitation of Christ, I want to
prepare for the Lord in our time a way to the people who
encounter me. Often I don’t succeed, I lose the ideal from
view, I forget. Yet the call of John the Baptist is always
there directing me to convert and do penance, for the
Reign of God is at hand.

The exegetes say that Jesus’ public ministry began with

the Baptism in the Jordan; that he was anointed and
strengthened by the Holy Spirit so he could begin his
work of redemption and his difficult way up to Golgotha.
John was, so to say, the instrument of this initiation. To-
day, too, Jesus needs instruments in order to begin anew
his work of redemption for our time.

That I got to pose as a model for Carl representing his

John has been not only a great honour, but also a remind-
er to be true to my own calling, namely to prepare a way
for the Lord and to be his instrument, in order that salva-

80
 THE WEDDING AT CANA month: September

82
Lovers in the guilt-free Garden of Eden

83
Principal Portrait: Dr Christiania Whitehead
In a verdant September, month of fruitfulness and har-
vest, one of the finest views of the monastery across its
orchards. This painting is structured in three horizon-
tal layers. The lower is of our communal human society,
those who live and work here. The middle is the luxuri-
ant fecundity of the Earth against which are bride Ange-
la - Gymnasium teacher, her groom Bela, and their offici-
ating priest, Pater Theophyl - also a Gymnasium teacher,
who actually did marry Angela and Bela in Munich two
years ago. This is therefore a ‘real’ wedding! The upper lay-
er represents Heaven with the lofty, Potala-like monas-
tery and, in Bavarian white and blue , lazy clouds drifting
easily upwards and out of the picture. The gathering of
people is as a Zoffany conversation piece. Pater Rhabanus
leans forwards perhaps all the better to hear, or maybe
to comment upon Christ’s words. Others listen attentively
and digest Christ’s quiet parables - for yes, the subject is
teaching. Most individuals here portrayed are associated
with the Rhabanus Maurus Gymnasium or with its related
Tagesheim. From left to right: handsomely bearded Broth-
er Franz who is, in fact, the monastery’s plumber; Broth-
er Josef is the Gymnasium’s deputy headmaster; Renate
Dietzel, a Gymnasium teacher whose daughter, Veronika,
appears in The Nativity; Brother David - Tagesheim and
the monastery’s archivist; Sisters Christine and Claude -
from the Benedictine convents at Jouarre and Lyons in
France - painted from my drawings made on their only
visit to Saint Ottilien a year ago, and also from affection-
ate memory, and unusually for me, from a couple of Pater
Cyrill’s supplementary photographs; ‘Doc’, Hans Schmid,
retired Science teacher still very much associated with
the Gymnasium, who is also the monastery’s beekeep-
er responsible for the production of excellent commer-
cially-retailed honey; Pater Vianney, head of the board-
ing school and Saint Ottilien’s music director and teacher,
84
and a caring ‘surrogate son’ to... Resi Nebel - and more of
her anon. My trusty Gymnasium colleague-in-art, Kunst
Meister Karlheinz Kappl raises his glass of red wine to de-
fine this particular miracle.
Astra, the monastery’s only dog, confronts us, defending,
maybe warning us away from Christ’s unprotected back.
Perhaps Astra knows more of future events than we do?
Astra belongs to Brother Franz - or maybe Brother Franz
belongs to Astra! I wished to depict Astra for the reasons
given - hence Franz’s presence also here. In my studio I
first completed the portrait of Franz who agreed to return
another day bringing Astra. I was a little anxious: large still-
wet floor-standing oil paintings are not the best of envi-
ronments for an amiably curious, large, long-haired dog.
Jacob’s Coat of Many Colours might easily become Franz’s
Dog of Many Hues! Also, I assure you, loveable Astra ex-
pertly opens all doors equipped with lever handles! But I
need not have worried. Franz and Astra arrive. Franz says,
“Sit”. Astra sits impeccably still... and I paint Astra.
It is a hot day. Both studio windows are open. Save for the
gentle sounds of a brush actively mixing, painting, and
cleaning, it is quiet... Astra sitting, Franz watching, Carl
painting. Suddenly, leaping clear through the far window,
a cat arrives ‘plonk’ on the studio floor. I behold this un-
expected visitor. Rather foolishly, I exclaim to Franz, “It’s a
cat!” Franz looks at me. “It’s Moritz,” he calmly replies. Dum-
founded, somewhat stupidly I repeat, “Moritz?”“My cat,” he
emphasises. “Moritz... your cat?” I reiterate, gazing down at
this dark feline whose yellow orbs gaze up at me in evi-
dent protest at my presumed decision only to paint ca-
nine Astra. And as (and I’ve painted two in these pictures!)
all ‘movie’ Americans are reported to say, “I kid you not”:
that is actually how and why my portrait of Brother Franz
includes... a very persuasive cat called Moritz!
And a lasting Benedictine memory: every other year Saint
Ottilien extends a Sunday welcome to its sister Benedic-
tines from the convent of Tutzing at Starnberger See. The
intervening years permit the monks of Saint Ottilien to
visit their sisters at Tutzing. Immensely honoured, I, the
English ‘interloper’, have been allowed ultra-friendly par-
ticipation in both events. When, (was it only last year... or
perhaps the year before?) fifty Benedictine nuns came to
Saint Ottilien, a visit to my atelier was a mutually-agreed
item in their afternoon’s individually-chosen itinerary. The
sisters’ laudatory interest was redeeming, but never in my
life have I grovelled so much on hands and knees, in my
confined studio attempting to prevent contact between
long black sweeping Benedictine skirts and my multi-col-
oured still-wet and very large oil paintings! I think they all
escaped in their purest black! C’est vraiment la vie de noir
Benedictine!
For me, the most endearing portrait amongst others is
that of Resi Nebel - painted in her ninety-fourth year. Able
still to walk with independent care, bright blue eyes filled
with humour and always ready for a laugh, Resi especially
enjoyed watching, on TV, Miss Marple, and football and
basketball matches, during which she knitted non-stop
with great gusto. Accompanied and chauffeured by ‘sur-
rogate son and guardian’ Pater Vianney, Resi came to my
studio for four short half-hour sittings all of which were
recorded on DVD. She was a delight to know. Sadly, sev-
eral days after her portrait was completed, she died - in
peace and, with family around her. This portrait instantly
became part of Resi’s memorial. I feel this picture is more
than justified simply for the pleasure it gave her - she who
had been a hospital nurse here at Saint Ottilien during
WW2. Resi had tried to save the lives of Jewish concen-
tration camp survivors and is finally buried here in the
monastic cemetary. Resi was only a few years younger
than the archabbey itself. I’m so pleased that this painting
commemorates her joyous living. When I look at Resi’s im-
age I am not downhearted. Rather, I smile at my memory
of her - would that we all might leave such an uplifting
impression on our fellows!
The principal portrait here is Christiania Whitehead who
has been a gently enabling influence in my life since she
was fifteen. Now university lecturer in Mediaeval studies,
published writer and poet, international symphony or-
chestral violinist, local church organist, exhibiting paint-
er, and mother to three-year-old Sophy - truly the Renais-
sance woman in whose caring friendship I remain.
85
 First day of The Wedding at Cana

86
Mea culpa! I lost the computer file of my studio photographs of Christiania - hence this endearingly
domestic picture of her playing and singing nursery songs with daughter Sophy in England

87
88
DR CHRISTIANIA WHITEHEAD
Thoughts on my time at Saint Ottilien I remember the portrait of myself coming together very
effortlessly. Perhaps this matched the optimism and fair-
weather aspect of the picture itself. While I was sitting
Well, it’s a long time ago now. The snows were just melt- there, most of the wedding guests had yet to materialise.
ing, I remember, and it was the first sustained sunshine of But meanwhile, they’ve crowded in, and the bridal cou-
the year. Spring flowers were showing in the flower beds ple with them. As such, they’ve developed as much in re-
in front of the abbey church. I remember taking endless lation to myself as to the rest of the picture. And I take
pleasure in the beauty and peacefulness of the place - pleasure in that relationship. This wedding is something
sloping off whenever I could to the wayside cross where I’ve exercised some influence upon. Perhaps, some day, I
the paths converge on the southern side of the monas- may see it, in some way, as my own.
tery.
Warwickshire, England June 2006
Being painted in the foreground of these paintings was,
for me, a calming and meditative kind of experience. I
don’t remember feeling any tension or anxiety about
being scrutinized so closely. Rather, it was an additional
chance to relax more closely into the productive peace
of the place.

I was happy that I was given the role of mediator into the
painting of the Wedding at Cana. Many of the paintings
involve difficult, poignant or tragic subject matters, but
this must be one of the most joyous and trouble-free of
the entire series. I remember the sunniness of the scene,
and the colour and verdancy of the orchards in the mid-
dle ground. I was, I suppose, taking the role of mediator
into a scene of pure celebration, a scene of miracles and
revelations admittedly, but also a scene where human
love is being honoured - is a cause for revelry. How grand
and intimidating to be allocated as a channel into such
things! I suppose all the foreground mediators struggle
to do justice to the profundity of the scenes they are put
before. But how challenging to be offered that position to
occupy in the first place.

89
90
Stationen unserer Resi Our Resi´s Stations

Resi Nebel Resi Nebel

geboren am Fest des hl. Evangelisten Lukas 18. Oktober 1909 born on the feast of St. Luke the Evangelist, October 18, 1909

im landwirtschaftlichen Betrieb on a farm

Vater: Johann Nebel father: Johann Nebel

Mutter: Mechthilde Nebel mother: Mechthilde Nebel

erstes von sechs Kindern the eldest of six children

drei Schwestern (Franzi 1910, Nanni 1919, Kathi 1921) three sisters (Franzi 1910, Nanni 1919, Kathi 1921)

zwei Brüder (Andreas 1913, Konrad 1932) two brothers (Andreas 1913, Konrad 1932)

Grund- und Hauptschule in Eresing primary and secondary school in Eresing

Küchenhilfe in der Klostergaststätte St. Ottilien (1926-28) Worked in the monastery guesthome kitchen at St. Ottilien (1926-28)

Hausangestellte im Ferienheim Schondorf (1929-31) Housekeeping staff of the resort at Schondorf (1929-31)

Küchenhilfe im Café Vogel in Diessen (1932-34) Kitchen staff at the Café Vogel in Diessen (1932-34)

Hausfrau bei der Knochenschmiedin in Eresing (1935-36) House maid to the Knochenschmiedin in Eresing (1935-36)

Küchenhilfe im Café Deible in Landsberg (1937-42) Kitchen staff at the Café Deible in Landsberg (1937-42)

Lazarett Kloster St. Ottilien (1942-47) millitary hospital St. Ottilien (1942-47)

Klosterküche St. Ottilien (1947-51) monastery kitchen St. Ottilien (1947-51)

Seminar (Küchenhilfe, Putzfrau / 1951-2004) school kitchen and cleaning staff (1951-2004)

gestorben am Dreifaltigkeitssonntag 6. Juni 2004 in St. Ottilien died on Trinity Sunday, June 6, 2004 at St. Ottilien

beerdigt am Mittwoch 9. Juni 2004 im ottilianer Friedhof buried on Wednesday, June 9, 2004, in the Ottilien cemetery

91
Weißt du, wie viel wir dir verdanken? Do You Realize Just How Grateful We Are?

Ich möchte dir “danke” sagen für dein Lächeln, I want to say “thanks” for your smile
dass du uns immer geschenk hast. With which you constantly gifted us:
Im “Café Resi” war es immer fröhlich. In the “Café Resi” it was always cheerful.

Ich möchte dir “danke” sagen für deine Hilfe, I want to say “thanks” for your help
wenn wir am Abend das Geschirr gebracht haben. On evenings when we brought the silverware:
Da gab es immer paar nette Gespräche. Then there were always a couple nice conversations.

Ich möchte dir “danke” sagen für deine Einfachheit, I want to say “thanks” for your simplicity
die du uns mit deinem Leben gezeigt hast. Which you life revealed to us:
Das machte das Schülerleben viel leichter. It made school life much easier.

Ich möchte dir “danke” sagen für deine Vitalität, I want to say “thanks” for your vitality
die wir immer wieder bestaunen durften. At which we still marvel:
Ohne sie hätten wir manchmal schlapp gemacht. Without it we would sometimes have given up.

Ich möchte dir “danke” sagen für deine ernsten Worte, I want to say “thanks” for your serious words
mit denen wir deine mitdenkende Art erkannten. That told us how you saw an issue:
Dadurch konnten wir manches erst richtiger sehen. They helped us see things more clearly.

Ich möchte dir “danke” sagen für deine Mütterlichkeit, I want to say “thanks” for your motherliness
die wir alle schätzen lernten. Which we all learned to treasure:
Du warst halt wirklich die Mutter des Seminars. You were indeed the mother of the boarding school.

Danke Resi, dass wir dich erleben durften! We are so thankful, Resi, for having gotten to know you!

PATER VIANNEY OSB

St. Ottilien Archabbey June 2006

92
NINE STUDENTS OF THE RHABANUS MAURUS GYMNASIUM
(from the hundreds I have drawn)

93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
NINE DRAWINGS IN BOSNIA
(from the many I made)

My first drawing of war-orphaned Emina was distant - she literally sat anxiously away from me. When she saw the draw-
ing, something changed - perhaps then she trusted me. For this second drawing, on a dusty knoll outside the wired
perimeter fence of the grim refugee camp, Emina came to sit right beside me, and I saw her child’s eyes of pain.

102
In a bare room of the Barake Laukevic refugee camp, Zorika sat uncomfortably on the edge of an ex-army steel bed.
As I drew her in war’s destitution, I thought she was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen. It was my
privilege to make this - her portrait. Perhaps that legendary Helen of Troy might have been as imperiously
noble and essentially female as this Zorika Perak in life’s despair witnessed by me.

103
 Two inseperable orphans of the war. When a year later I returned to the awful Barake Laukevic Refugee Camp,
in answer to my question, I was told that Senada had died “of sorrowing”. On my drawing the names were
written by the children themselves.

104
 Advaeja, a recently Bosnian War-widowed mother with her only child, Muhamed. In a refugee camp containing
some 500 people - the adults mostly female - Advaeja, unable to ascertain in which baraka I was actually working
that day, had waited stoically in late afternoon’s broiling sun for two hours beside my parked truck to which
she knew I would eventually return. She wished only to ask if I would draw her fatherless son. There and then,
at the conclusion of an arduous day, I agreed to draw both her and her son. Even in these unexceptional penlines
Advaeja’s dreadful inner sorrow is evident.

105
 In a Trappist monastery’s hospital north of Banja Luka, war-maimed
and orphaned Serbian brother and sister - the boy, I was told, wearing his dead father’s wristwatch

106
A dignified lady who once cleaned my muddy shoes
as her only means of giving me a gift.

107
108
A severely wounded Serbian soldier encased in medical plaster - yet who implored me to draw him

109
 The slender minaret of Gracanica’s mosque - used for occasional and casual target practice by Orthodox
Christian Serbian artillery in the encircling mountains. ‘Oh what a tangled web we weave.’ - William Shakespeare

110
 THE RAISING OF LAZARUS month: October

112
113
Principal Portrait: Reverend Dr Sabina Alkire
Once I made the decision, in England, to set this subject
in the museum’s sadly hidden-away chronicle of Benedic-
tine suffering in the Korean War, I knew it would be a dif-
ficult proposition. Monochrome studies were part of my
studentship, and also a regular component of my cours-
es during decades of university teaching. But never had I
painted a major and complex canvas - least of all, one of
an important series - basically in black and white mono-
chrome. This is one of two ‘black’ RESURRECTION paint-
ings. Except that the first, The Annunciation, is not actually
black: it is darkly unawakened purples, blues and greens.
But Lazarus concerns the stark blackness of death where
life’s threshold is Christ’s red-shirted raising arm; is the
blood turgidly reflowing in Lazarus himself (Pater Rudolf )
as, with a Thomas’s grave incredulousness, he is reborn...
caused to live again; and it is a pronouncement firmly
declared in the eyes of Sabina Alkire from Harvard Uni-
versity and St. Paul’s Cathedral, London. Despite its death
and blackness, this painting is really about the optimistic
Beauty of a miracle, and the essentially procreative Beauty
of one singular human being.
You may consider this next comment somewhat eccen-
tric, but artists work according to their own inner truths.
Music has been an essential enrichment to my life since
childhood: my Protestant mother a pianist; my Roman
Catholic father a church choir singer and soloist. The arm
of Christ is that of Pater Emmanuel - portrayed in The Ser-
mon On The Mount - who is an exemplary organist, truly
an artist of the keyboards. Sabina Alkire was once violinist
in the professional Anastasi String Quartet in which her
sister, Hannah, was cellist. As, in this darkly monochrome
arrangement of death and life, I painted Emmanuel’s arm
and hand, and Sabina’s face, in my heart there was mu-
sic for piano and violin... of sonatas by Mozart, Beethoven,
114
and Brahms. Maybe even Massanet’s eloquent Médita-
tion... concerning love’s religious conversion. Even at a fu-
neral, music is always life-affirming. In 1960, at the Paint-
ing School of The Royal College of Art in London, the title
of my post-graduate dissertation was Death in Music.
Music. I can still hear, as if this very second, as if in concert,
my father’s Italianate tenor voice singing Macushla to my
mother’s nimble piano accompaniment - more than sixty
years ago. I was told that when he, Joseph, died without
stress or pain during an afternoon in a hospital ward near
Milton Keynes, my sometimes ‘difficult’ yet morally-truth-
ful father suddenly sat upright in his bed, sang the first
verse of Franck’s Panis Angelicus, lay back on his pillow,
and simply passed away. Offhand, I think of the imperi-
ously-skilled, great American portrait painter of a socie-
ty he frequently abhorred, John Singer Sargent - he ‘died
well’ too. And he was a pianist who played demanding
contemporay music such as Iberia by Isaac Albeniz. (Ap-
ropos Sargent, if you query my words ‘died well’ I’m afraid
you’ll have to verify their accuracy for yourself!) One leg
amputated, Edouard Manet on his deathbed continued, it
is thought, to paint small studies of the flowers in a glass
vase placed beside him. If this was so, then what voca-
tional courage facing life’s oncoming tidal termination.
And Carel Fabritius - painter one of my favourite pictures
in Holland, The Goldfinch, yet another wooden panel, pos-
sibly for an interior furnishing such as a cabinet. Young
Fabritius was a pupil of massively Shakespearean Rem-
brandt and very likely teacher to music-imbued Jan Ver-
meer. When on October 12 in 1654, the gunpowder fac-
tory in Delft exploded it took emergingly-talented Carel
and his studio with it. What an awesome annihilation for
any painter!
Lazarus - such imposing death, such high drama, and
such compelling art, and music.
And my mother? I loved her. My saintly, and throughout
the spartan severities of WW2, my loving, nourishing
mother? For that charmingly stubborn, socially-talented
and stylish woman, there was to be no Raising from the
Dead. No rebirth in Christ’s blessing. Instead, relentlessly
programmed for May née Edmondson - ‘Maisie’ to family
and friends - were eleven harrowing months of increasing
pain and pitiless disability as she died in the crucifixion of
abdominal cancer. In her coffin my mother’s corpse lay as
an emaciated, carved brown effigy unknown, unidentifi-
able to the staring adult boy who’d shared her entire ma-
ternal life.
At work on the developing Lazarus.
In Winter’s threadbare regret and Spring’s optimism afresh,
Memory is timeless. And music? Yes please, a return to
music - the greatest, most profound of human artistic ex-
pressions. In loving dwell: Beethoven - his Romance no 2
for violin and orchestra, played without orchestra once in
my studio as a personal gift to me. Emotions tear intelli-
gence apart. And, in this fleeting life, rightly so. For intel-
ligence is but a child.
And these memories of Art and Death and Love and Mu-
sic are my Lazarus.
Photograph by Andreas Janikowski
115
I will add something else. Professionals often do not
like admitting their errors: errors of technique; errors of
judgement. During the progress of this painting I made
two conspicuous, avoidable mistakes. The first was a se-
rious one for which, in university semesters past, I would
have severely reprimanded a first-year Fine Art student.
It is encapsulated in Andreas Janikowski’s rather immedi-
ate photograph of me working on this painting at an in-
termediate stage. Each of my pictures was overtured by
weeks of mental planning - rarely with drawings on pa-
per and never with detailed compositions of any kind. I
work on adrenalin’s impulse hoping for a fluid amalgam
of thoughful preparation, intuitive informed visual judge-
ment, and, on the day, experienced deftness with the
brush. This is not what I have taught my students. I have
taught the well-tried general rules which, like legal laws,
are good for most people most of the time, but for some
individuals? Human methods have their pitfalls. Beginning
Lazarus with directly brushed lines of mixed grey oilpaint,
I geometrically subdivided the canvas into its subordinate
rectangles more or less as they are in the finished picture.
Aware that it might be many months before Sabina Alkire
was able to appear in my studio, I concentrated on the
assembly of Korean Benedictine photographs, accurately
recomposing them as displayed in the museum. Tolerably
satisfied, in my usual fashion I made a digital photograph
of the developing painting, fed it into my iBook, and then
almost instantly departed to England for a necessary in-
termission. One night in Winlaton Mill, in my small bun-
galow, in the darkness I studiously browsed on my Ap-
ple computer the ‘in-progress’ images of the Saint Ottil-
ien pictures. Though in England, I was still working on
the compositions. I critically evaluated. I made notes of
things to do. I clicked Lazarus to the screen, nodded to
myself, and passed to another. Suddenly I had a strange
sense of visual doubt. I clicked back to Lazarus. What was
it? It seemed quite OK for a beginning... but my memo-
116
ry objected - there was something wrong. What was it?
What’s wrong with the twenty-five photographs you’ve
so carefully measured and transcribed? One, two, three,
four, five, six, seven... you fool, there are only twenty two!
The top row of three is missing! My thoughts during that
night are here unprintable! Returned to Saint Ottilien, it
meant completely redrawing the complicated left area of
the half-developed picture. A stupidly humbling tactical
defeat from which one learns? Yes, one learns that one is
always a student... never a master!
My second error was not as serious - but...
I’m an old-fashioned painter whose studentship includ-
ed grinding pigments with mortar and pestle to make
useable oil paints. Much more recently teaching English
children at Saint Alban’s Primary School we’ve ventured
into the local suburban countryside where suitably pro-
tected by hygienic plastic gloves we’ve collected various
earths, vegetable growths and leaves, and sundry season-
al berries. Back at school in later morning, children, class
teacher and friend Denise Swindlehurst, and I have man-
ufactured water colour paints - yes, un-permanent and
quickly-fugitive maybe, and yet with those simple colours
the enthusiastic kids have actually painted lovely pictures
in that same day’s afternoon. But there are modern elec-
tronic tools too...
And to that second error.
In this picture Pater Rudolf is Lazarus. Rudolf is an extreme-
ly busy monk with demanding spiritual responsibilities in
the Diocese of Augsburg, making it difficult for him easily
to schedule painting appointments in my studio. For this
reason I’d promised to strive for completion in only two
sessions. Rudolf arrived for the first, which seemed to go
well. However, that evening after refectory supper, when,
as usual, I returned to the studio to clear palette and wash
brushes, and, most importantly, to sit quietly evaluating
my day’s work, I realized that not only had I made Rudolf’s
head too big for the composition, but it was also injudi-
ciously positioned. O dear, such a gloomy state of mind
to end the day! But yet again, in this Twenty-first Century,
my laptop computer came to the rescue! Next morning
I made a good digital photograph of the ill-placed por-
trait. Cabled into the computer, it was then printed out
as an enlarged copy. In the afternoon I literally obliterated
the face on the canvas before making a corrected image
from the print-out. When Rudolf returned for his second
session, I was actually able to complete the portrait in the
agreed period of time - to our mutual satisfaction! Mod-
ern technology has its decided advantages.
Akin to Roland Ward’s shirt in Christ In His Father’s Work-
shop, here, too, is another fortuitous concidence. When
film maker and photographer, Pater Martin, visited my
studio to see how the twelve paintings were coming on,
Lazarus was quite well-developed but still lacking Christ’s
arm, Pater Rudolf, and Sabina. Pater Martin was especially
interested in my deployment of these tragic museum pho-
tographs as the painting’s black and white environment.
He asked who the principal portrait would be. “An Amer-
ican colleague of mine”, I explained. “Someone involved
in the Bosnian War, a Developmental Economist dealing
with international poverty reduction who was now a min-
ister of the Anglican Church.” I added that, as if in design’s
monochromatic compliance, she would wear her black
and white ministerial attire for the picture. “Hmn,” Martin
murmured thoughtfully, “an American?” He pointed up to
my rendering of the photograph of the war-ruined Kore-
an monastery. “Do you know who took that photograph?”
I shook my head. “An American,” he replied, “an American
GI soldier in the United Nations army once again advanc-
ing northwards.”
So: an unknown United Nations American soldier fight-
ing in the Korean War; a known American involved in the
Bosnian War, who, once with the United Nations, is now
ordained as minister to God. In monastic silence I ponder
and contemplate: yes, it is a most fortuitous coincidence.
Verily - for me, an American’s Raising Of Lazarus.
117
 The Reverend Dr Sabina Alkire in my studio nearing the conclusion of her portrait in Lazarus.

118
The completed portrait of Sabina Alkire in The Raising Of Lazarus.

119
THE REVEREND DR SABINA ALKIRE

Faded photos in dusty glass cases. The faces of martyrs.

They are displayed to celebrate human courage: the cour-
age to live fully at life’s very cost. Silent faces invite on-
lookers to such a path. ‘I pray that you might find some-
thing to live for, something worth dying for.’ Greater loss
has none, than to lay down life itself for one’s friends - no?
Is this sacrifice not the model for self-giving, of nobility, of
holy love? Indeed it can be. So we savour the sweet sad-
ness of their stories, the cadence of plucky bravery in view
of peril, of love resolute before violence, of gentle faith se-
renely dying. Death provides the crowning medallion, the
ultimate proof of faith. Death serves to inspire, not disap-
point us - and there is true wisdom here.

How unwelcome, how ugly, the hands that intrude to

heal. We repulse them. Fiercely. The story is set, + its end-
ing too. We have come to be comforted by it.

But we do not prevail. Unwelcome to us, the dissonance

of healing - of joy - of resurrection. We had relinquished
these. Yet ignoring our rebuff they reach in unbidden -
gently, surely, instantly - not uprooting the earlier wisdom
but completing it.

On spiritual retreat in rural Wales July 2006

120
PATER RUDOLPH STENGLEIN, OSB

Text to my picture “Lazarus”

Can you imagine what it’s like to receive your life as a new gift? No – you can’t.

Can you imagine meeting again that friend to whom you owe your second life?

I have experienced what “Jesus” means: in God is salvation.

St. Ottilien Archabbey, Bavaria June 2006

121
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT month: November

123
124
Principal Portrait: Anand Madhvani
Here you can read an eloquent essay by Anand. It is of
his memories across twelve years. It is about me too - of
our periodically recurring friendship. It touches upon the
personal history mentioned in my Introduction to this
Handbook. But it perceives that identical history through
another’s observing sensibility. When I first read Anand’s
carefully-shaped prose, I shed tears. Let me say this: many
of the pictures hanging on walls in domestic rooms or in il-
lustrious international art galleries, are not simply artifacts
of aesthetic or accumulating financial worth, they are tes-
taments to human lives lived. They encapsulate passion’s
hours ecstatic and love’s trials expired. Yes, surely that’s life
as most of us know it? Despite some arid conceptual nar-
cissisms within the Twentieth Century, art is not about be-
ing clever. Art is about lived human experience truthfully
expressed. That is its only gleamingly-true worth. I am a
contemporary European artist. I exist today. Yet my paint-
ings here are in a direct pictorial tradition stemming from
the prehistoric cave drawings at Lascaux, perhaps even
including the Nineteenth Century tepee image/murals
of the Great Plains tribes of North America. But, returning
to The Sermon on The Mount: beneath the onion-domed
tower of Saint Ottilien’s rococo chapel, and next to his
Crucifixion, Christ stands orating to a group of Benedic-
tines. It has recently been commented how ill-mannered
it is that no monk looks towards Jesus as he speaks. Dur-
ing the making of these paintings I have been permitted
the honour of dining with monks in their splendid refec-
tory. Weekday evenings, as we eat at supper, there is one
monk reading a prepared text from the central pulpit. No
one looks at him as he speaks.
This painting’s foreground group comprises senior monks
and junior monks. Superiors and teachers, and their stu-
dents. From the left margin, back row: Brothers Julian, Ja-
kob, Quirin, Postulant Ralf - a medical attendant in the
monastery’s sick bay, hence his white tunic, and Brother
Raphael. Immediately in front from left to right are Paters
Emmanual (Christ’s raising arm in Lazarus), Willibrord, Jo-
hannes, and Cyrill - enthusiastic five-a-side indoor soccer
player, sometimes to be seen outside whizzing at speed
around the monastic complex on roller blades. Left fore-
ground in orange, in the manner of Judas, Brother Jonath-
an steals away from this al fresco assembly of Christ’s dis-
ciples. Beneath his Master’s sermon and appropriately
dominating the centre is Pater Raymund, the monastery’s
subprior. To the right of Raymund are Paters Matthias, and
Dominikus - the archabbot’s personal secretary and a tal-
ented flower painter whose picture postcards sell very
well in Saint Ottilien’s bookshop. Behind are three novices
all possessing doctorates in science - brothers Elias, Tim-
otheus, and Markus...who are, in the context of the last
painting, The Resurrection, an objective cause for my re-
joicing. And finally, but by no means least, Guesthouse
Master Pater Remigius quietly serenades on his guitar
these famously enduring, profoundly influential words of
Jesus Christ:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they shall be satisfied.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
“Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons
of God...” Matthew 5/2-9
Sitting in a 21st Century Benedictine monastery, I shud-
der at the relevance of these words to this year of 2006
wherein on our planet, according to the World Health
125
Organization, one million people will commit suicide, and
eleven million children will die unnecessarily of HIV/AIDS,
malaria, tuberculosis, enslaved social and sexual abuse, of
starvation in orphaned and unloved neglect, as unwant-
ed trash discarded along our human roadside. Eleven
million? Eleven million of our tribe’s youngest - unloved
and casually thrown away. That’s 1,200 children for every
hour of this our Bavarian day secure and comfortable, of
this our English eating and reading day. When you have
your mid-morning coffee, estimate how many unloved
children will expire in your refreshing cup to be enjoyed.
And what would a come-again Jesus Christ think and say
about us and ours? A benign parable or a scalpel’s stric-
ture?
The Reverend Dr Edmund Newell, Canon Chancellor of
Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London, is co-author with Sabina
Alkire of What Can One Person Do? (Darton, Longmore and
Todd 2005). Buy it. Read it. Be sobered. Be affirmed in a
determination to improve life for all those dispossessed
and forgotten other human beings on this single spin-
ning globe.
In Seven Words for the 21st Century - same publishers 2003,
and edited by Newell, in her essay on I thirst (John 19:28),
Alkire, an American, I gently remind, poignantly writes:
‘When a mother has a baby in Singapore or the United
Kingdom or another well-off country, that baby could ex-
pect to live to be about 77 years old. When a mother gives
birth in Senegal or Haiti or Laos, she can expect her child
to die 25 years earlier, at the age of 52. In Sierra Leone the
children can expect to live only half as long as Singapo-
rean or British children. In 38 countries the children born
today are expected a shorter life than the children who
were born in those countries a decade ago. The fall in life
expectancy is even more unjust because the worldwide
126
life expectancy has risen by four months each year since
1970. We have more food on the planet per person than
ever before (and more than enough to feed everyone
well), more children in school, and more adults who can
read. But we still do not take care of one another.
‘On 11 September 2001, more than twice as many people
on earth died of AIDS than in the tragic catastrophes at
the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the Pennsyl-
vania air crash combined. But not only on 11 September.
On 10 September and 12 September, and each day that
year, an average of 8,210 people died of AIDS and 15,000
contracted HIV/AIDS for the first time.’
(When I first read these sentences, they left within me an
abject feeling of hollow inadequacy.)
And later in his sermon Christ preaches the unarguable,
but humanly near-impossible?: “You have heard that it
was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’. But I
say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone
slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.
And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him
have your cloak as well...” Matthew 5/38
In Christ´s time such seminally brave words declared
within absolute tyranny; and in this our capitalistic age of
greedy, predatory litigation... do these words fail?
Then:
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s cloth-
ing but inwardly are ravenous wolves...” Matthew 7/15
Religious belief or not, surely these words haunt us still -
for are they not a stabilising Truth, a clearing Torch to our
shadowed and feckless moral human conscience?
The Sermon beginning

127
 Anand Madhvani beside his completed portrait in the unfinished Sermon On The Mount

128
129
ANAND MADHVANI
I first met Carl when we travelled to the Balkans in 1994.
My memories of that time are unfocussed and dream-
like: my father had died in the previous month and, being
with strangers in an unfamiliar setting, full of both natural
beauty and human horror, was bewildering. Cathartic as
well, in unexpected ways.
Our group journeyed up and down the Croatian coast,
crowded into two small minibuses, performing a little
play and spending time with refugees in shelled-out ho-
tels, or bare, dusty camps. We didn’t have much aid to dis-
tribute. We were simply saying, in our small way, “You are
not forgotten”.
For me, Carl became a bubble of calm and concentra-
tion amid the hectic clamour. Somewhere, in a doorway
or under the shade of a tree, he would sit for an hour or
two and draw. Magically, children would be drawn to him,
curious to see what he had put on paper. What could this
stranger have seen of such value in their dismal surround-
ings? A grown man, taking the time and care to draw the
unloved place they had been forced to inhabit.
The faces of the children would then begin to appear in
the sketchbook. With a few lines here, a graceful curve
there, something of that time and that place, and their
memories, would be gently read from their faces and
carefully recorded, stored, treasured. A powerful ancient
enchantment. Carl would soon have his young audience
transfixed, intensely watching every stroke of his pen,
waiting patiently for their turn to come.
That summer I was inspired to take a sketchbook of my
own to Switzerland. I spent many useful hours quietly fill-
ing it.
130
Two years later our paths crossed again, in Bosnia. Same
war, different refugees (Internally Displaced Persons, to be
clinically precise). The artist was still to be found in a patch
of shade somewhere, patiently and methodically trans-
forming the empty pages into the likenesses of children.
As he worked, the faces around him became illuminated
with looks of thoughtful wonder.
I remember stories that became woven into every sketch.
Carl would remember where each sitting took place,
minute details about clothes, how the child initially sat
- shy, playful, dubious, challenging... It was a pleasure to
catch up on his day’s work every evening, with a detailed
account of each encounter, the living context to each pat-
tern on paper, amidst our frustrations and doubts. “What
are we doing here? What can we possibly achieve? What do
we have to give these people who have lost everything?”
Carl’s sketchbooks became, for me, part of the answer.
There were other stories too, told by the surviving men,
having built up their trust - fiery shots of sljivovica provid-
ing social lubrication. Stories that the rest of the group
were perhaps too young to be entrusted with; the back-
ground we were vaguely aware of, but spared the horrific
details of. Rapes, murders, and vengeance. Pain. The per-
sonal stories that, one by terrible one, become the com-
ponents of a conflict, a war, an atrocity - words we often
use but rarely comprehend.
I can vividly picture Carl listening in his patient way as
each story unfolds, shaking his head gently with each
new horror: the sharing a terrible privilege, a burden to
bear forever. I’m still learning the importance of such
sharing, listening. Simply being witness to the things that
have occurred.
Later that summer, after our first journey to the Balkans, a
friend showed me an historical account of how the con-
flict unfolded, documenting atrocities in methodical and
shocking detail. I could barely look at the graphic cover
photograph. It was all too close, too connected to the
families we’d been seeing, to real people. Something sim-
ilar happened years later in South Africa as I read the first
few pages of Catherine Stewart’s copy of Jonathan Kap-
lan’s book The Dressing Station. It began with a vivid ac-
count of violence in the coloured townships I’d just been
working in. A few pages in, I had to put it down, feeling
physically faint. What could I achieve by reading these
things, by hearing about the pain I had been fortunate
not to have experienced?
The years passed. For me, the Balkans was followed by
other work - aid management within the international
system, and work with homeless people, with young chil-
dren. Six years later, just before I left for Johannesburg as
a peace worker, Carl and I met again amongst the ruins of
Rievaulx Abbey in Northern England. That was when I first
heard of his plans to paint this series. Another two years
passed, with me in Africa, engrossed with projects half a
world away, unsure why I’d agreed to a sitting in Germany
‘when time permitted’, not at all clear why he’d asked me,
of all people. I’m not Christian by background, so to be
placed in a painting about the life of Jesus, for a Bavarian
monastery, was something of a surprise! A long time had
passed since our trips, and memory grew dim - surely this
was a finished chapter and our lives had moved on?
However, I trusted Carl’s judgement so, when timings
eventually came into alignment in 2005, I met him once
again, this time at Munich airport.
Though I’d stayed at St Ottilien before, while briefly pass-
ing through on our earlier journeys to the Balkans, the
monastery seemed utterly unfamiliar. Carl was just the
same as I remembered him though. A week of sittings
and conversations passed both quickly and slowly. Hav-
ing the time to simply talk with someone, and find con-
nections between our very different lives and experienc-
es, is such a gift.
We often talked about the Balkans and this project. The
huge canvases, in various states of completion, already
dominated his two small rooms, and also invaded the
narrow corridor outside. I learned who had come from
where for their sittings, the significance of each face or
look, the problems that remained to be solved... Mean-
while the stairs or floorboards above occasionally creaked
with the tread of the cobbler/barber monk who shared
the house. Outside Carl’s little studio the spring sunshine
was dazzling, while inside the cool guesthouse the lunch-
time soups were delicious.
Something formed a clearer shape for me during these
sittings. Our journeys to the Balkans, a decade earlier, had
felt like a closed chapter before I returned to St Ottilien for
this portrait. I hadn’t stayed in contact with people in the
region, nor read much about what had happened. When
a memorial service took place earlier this year for the 8,000
men and boys massacred at Srebrenica in 1995, I caught
painful glimpses of it on television, feeling a pang of guilt,
together with sadness, at seeing the grief still evident
on the faces of people there. We had met families who
had lost fathers, brothers and husbands in those killings.
I wondered how their lives are now, and felt guilty that I
didn’t know, felt guilty that my own life had moved on.
Yet I also started seeing more connections linking these
experiences, what we saw and learned and shared, and
the work I have done since. Those encounters, in dusty ref-
ugee camps, made a lasting impact on many of us. When
131
Carl and I met another group member, Mark, a few weeks
later, this was confirmed for me. Carl certainly didn’t, and
perhaps couldn’t, forget; he has written and painted from
those experiences for a decade now. I have forgotten
many details, names and faces, but have been process-
ing and remembering in my own way, and through my
own work.
I don’t know much about art, so talking about painting,
while watching Carl work, was a revelation. I could only
glimpse how many layers of interpretation and meaning
might combine within each choice an artist makes, differ-
ent stories becoming interwoven into each piece of work.
I started to understand how Carl’s sketches, stories and
experiences had been deeply thought over, gestated,
over the past decade, and were now maturing into new
forms on the canvases around us. Everything fed into this
remarkably rich series of paintings. Here was one way of
processing and dealing with some of the intense things
we had seen and experienced: doing them justice by cap-
turing them within simple brushstrokes of pigment, col-
ours on cloth, with the gentle but firm request that this
not happen ever again.
We also talked about subject matter, the chosen scenes
of the Bible. Carl would, every few hours, exclaim incredu-
lously that he didn’t understand how he, an atheist, could
possibly have been chosen to paint this work. Yet there
we both were, in a German monastery, looking at his
scenes from the life of Jesus Christ.
I hadn’t given much thought to the nature of these paint-
ings before I arrived at St Ottilien but felt vaguely relieved
when Carl told me I would feature in the painting of the
Sermon on the Mount. For no obvious reason he was
aware of - that’s just the way it had worked out.
132
As somebody outside Christian traditions, I would have
felt uncomfortable in a scene that I felt was historically
questionable, clashed with my own beliefs, or rested on
miraculous events. In the Indian spiritual traditions I have
grown up within, ‘miracles’ have become distractions for
me from the central insights, the deeply rooted and prac-
tical teachings, which I have come to value.
One can question miracles, but a person speaking on a
hill is something basic and universal.
Yet as I read those passages again, prompted by the paint-
ing I had begun to materialise within, they proved more
difficult for me than I’d anticipated. I knew the Beatitudes,
of course - ‘Blessed are the meek’ and so on, each turn-
ing ‘common-sense’ perceptions of actions and rewards
upside-down - revolutionary indeed. I had always taken
this to mean reward in heaven for earthly good deeds.
Eastern faith traditions also offer rewards in the next life
for our actions in this one, a minor difference being that
they take ‘the next life’ literally: reincarnation. Either way, a
standard philosophical move to square what seems best
for an individual with what is best for their wider social
matrix - an age-old problem in different forms, for which
most societies have developed similar spiritual/religious/
cultural ‘solutions’.
However, as I read on, what I see is far more challeng-
ing, urgent and amazingly contemporary. After two years’
learning at the cutting edge of non-violence methods in
Johannesburg, here I find a two-thousand year-old man-
ual for non-violent action, and a strident and demanding
one at that. This voice is setting challenges for me per-
sonally, which I perhaps understand better than I would
have a few years earlier, but I’m afraid I cannot live up to.
This voice also seems to identify with and understand my
doubts unnervingly well.
I look at this text in a completely different light now. I am
in this painting, so now it’s personal.
I’ve heard how other people have also seen the life of Je-
sus completely afresh because of these canvases. Even
some of the monks, who have devoted their lives and
work to his teachings, have been challenged afresh sim-
ply because they saw him in a different context, in their
own context - within these paintings. They are renewing
something important, and making that source of wisdom
unflinchingly immediate and tangible, speaking direct-
ly to us, right now, across hundreds of years. The simple
challenge to live in peace. With love.
Perhaps that is Carl’s final enchantment, as he adds the fi-
nal touches while I type this. Maybe this is why the paint-
ings are so important: why they have drawn him, and so
many other people, into this project, even though many
of us were unsure quite why we were chosen at all. That
includes Carl himself, of course. As he works in his small
studio, bewildered but unable to stop, to pull himself
away from his work, I can clearly imagine him still mutter-
ing, “But I’m an atheist!”
Yes, Carl. Of course you are.
London, England December 2005
133
134
PATER CYRILL SCHAEFER OSB
The Steep Mountain
I first met Carl Lazzari in 1997. We found ourselves walk-
ing a pilgrimage from Subiaco to Montecassino. On the
first day we traversed the enchantingly still Aniane val-
ley. In its steep sides many a monk had earlier sought
solitude, among them Saint Benedict. Several beautiful
impressions came together here: the landscape which
constantly displayed new vistas, the awareness of be-
ing in one of monasticism’s most sacred spots, and the
bright mood which flowed out of us, drawn by the radi-
ant weather. Then came the steep mountain: the valley
narrowed abruptly and we had to scale a steep and seem-
ingly endless slope in the midday heat. This brought us to
the limits of our energy. Carl battled upwards with great
effort and several pauses. But he didn’t give up. As we
got to the top and stretched out for a long rest, he pulled
out his sketch pad again in order to record our improvised
midday siesta.
The steep mountain near Subiaco sometimes appears to
me symbolic of the huge project that Carl has pursued
steadfastly for over three years in our monastery: a series
of paintings which binds the biography of the artist to-
gether with his impressions of his stays at St. Ottilien, ac-
cidental acquaintances together with years-long friend-
ships, past together with present, salvation history to-
gether with the monastery’s history, micro- together with
macrocosm. The execution of the paintings came with
several difficulties which sometimes caused me to marvel
at Carl’s patience and other times at his flexibility when an
intended goal was unattainable and some solution had
to be sought. And not seldom it appeared to me that the
improvised solution was more successful than the previ-
ously set plan.
One example of a successful improvisation is in the first
picture in the cycle, whose theme is the Annunciation of
Mary. For the principal portrait Carl had his eye on a Car-
melite nun who had given up her artistic career in order
to enter a monastery. The necessary sittings for the por-
trait just could not be realized. The painting had to be de-
layed. A solution was finally found: Mother Irene Dabalus,
the Prioress General of the Missionary Benedictine Sisters
of Tutzing, now opens the line of portraits. This execution
appears more successful to me that the original plan, for
now the first painting of the cycle portrays the leader of
the Missionary Benedictine Sisters, and the cycle closes
with a portrait of the Archabbot of St. Ottilien who leads
the male branch of the Missionary Benedictines.
Upon reflection it becomes clear to me that the comple-
tion of so ambitious a project requires not only patience
and the ability to improvise, but also a fitting measure
of charm, for the models were often less than willing to
allow themselves to be painted. So Carl had to invest a
large portion of his time into convincing his models that
no pain would befall them. Many were thereby able to
enjoy the experience, like the princes of the 18th Centu-
ry, of sitting for hours and being recorded with oil and
brush.
Carl said to me before my sitting, that I should sit looking
toward my own image, whose form began to appear un-
der his hands. That was good advice, because it is harder
than it sounds to sit still for over two hours. Countless
thoughts shoot through the head, one recalls roughly
similar situations, thinks over the day’s plans, or is simply
in danger of falling asleep. Seeing one’s own image helps
135
to stay awake and remain present. It is uniquely fascinat-
ing to see how the most prominent features of ones own
face emerge out of a circular form. With astonishment
one notices face lines and features formerly less noticed.
Reflecting upon these features, one becomes conscious
of his own development. Good portrait art is obviously a
school for honesty.

With his series of paintings Carl has created for us a great

gift. It is a monumental portrayal of his years at St. Ottil-
ien which documents our situation at the beginning of
the 21st Century. However, many timeless moments flow
together in the pictures which are independent of St. Ot-
tilien and so can be understood by people of other plac-
es and times. One continues to wonder how Carl, under
great effort, managed to conquer this steep mountain.

136
 CHRIST DRIVING MONEYLENDERS FROM THE TEMPLE month: December

138
139
Principal Portrait:
Reverend Pastor Ephraim Satuku
The main doors of the archabbey church are usually opened
only for special occasions - important services, processions
and the like. Here, on a December night those doors are
flung wide and the light of Saint Ottilien’s ‘Temple’ floods out
into our darkness. Almost consumed by the sacred incan-
descence he defends stands Christ’s angry figure. I chose this
subject as one of my twelve because it is the only chronicled
occasion when Christ was furiously aggressive. It is an aspect
of his humanity with which certainly I, and perhaps all of
us, can easily identify. Anger. The world-changing Christian
deification of Jesus Christ has a danger - that we forget, no
longer appreciate, those common-or-garden ordinary days
of his life when he lived more or less as do we today. While
violence is dangerous and to be avoided, the actual sources
of anger are an important diagnostic evaluation of who we
are. So why was Christ angry?
Along the base of the picture are portraits of several of the
monks who deal with monastic finance. A little later in this
Handbook, Brother Ansgar, who is portrayed extreme left,
writes a thought-provoking essay on his Benedictine role as
the congregation’s international procurator responsible for
the annual expenditure of millions of euros. He touchingly
expresses a mite of sympathy for the ‘money mongers’ who
flee Christ’s wrath in my painting. Beside Ansgar appears Pa-
ter Frederik - Saint Ottilien’s own procurator. Then Pater Ludg-
er who is in Prokura finance. Brother Gabriel - responsible for
church service collections, who smiled in happiness every
minute he was painted, which gave me joy too. And con-
vivial Pater Tobias, the deputy Cellarer. Pater Berthold - fund-
raiser further afield in Germany. Brother Wunibald in finance,
and Pater Walter - art gallery director and until recently man-
ager of EOS Verlag, the Saint Ottilien publishing house. And,
finally, Pater Rupert, the all-important Cellarer himself.
140
The Reverend Pastor Ephraim Satuku is here the principal
portrait - his wife Winnie is painted in The Nativity immedi-
ately behind the Three Benedictine Kings. Recently retired,
Ephraim was for many years based at the remote Elim Mis-
sion in Northeastern Zimbabwe near the Mozambique bor-
der. Ephraim’s important responsibilities were for the en-
tire Mission - its community, its church, its hospital, and its
school. Ephraim and Winnie and myself have tenuously pre-
served a friendship begun in 1997. It was then that Cather-
ine Stewart and I set out, impecuniously, as if in some fic-
tional adventure of uncertainty, north from Pampierstad in
South Africa, across southeastern Botswana via Gaberone,
then into southern Zimbabwe, wearyingly to Bulawayo and
Harare, then, with almost increasing despair northwards to
Nyanga. And why? To work with the wonderful children of
Ephraim’s Elim Mission. Indirectly sponsored by Christiania
Whitehead’s personal contacts, Elim was a rich experience
for me and for everyone concerned... oh, alert young pupil,
now grown-adult Tatenda Chaka - be well? What a time that
was - through Tatenda’s eagerness, finding unrecorded cen-
turies-old Bushman brush paintings on a precipitous cliff-
face of Manjanja’s jungled mountain. Filled with fear of falling
I gazed transfixed at simple yet profound red-ochred images
of life and death painted on a weathered bare stone wall by
my masters.
I am currently invited to a Quaker orphanage outside Bula-
wayo, and again to wholesome Elim. Given life and continu-
ing health I will certainly respond to both with enthusiasm.
During their visit to St Ottilien, Ephraim and Winnie Satuku
informed me that since 1997 ‘Catherine and Carl’ have be-
come a living strand in the oral tapestry of Shona tribal his-
tory. How amazing, and infinitely humbling for us both.
The Moneylenders on its way.

141
142
THE REVEREND PASTOR EPHRAIM SATUKU
One of my longest journeys was when I went to Germany
on the 13 February 2005 with my wife, Winnie. I felt very
honoured to be one of those many people from all over
the world who were chosen to be painted by such an ex-
perienced artist. I come from North Eastern Zimbabwe
close to the border with Mozambique.
Words may fail to really express how much we felt about
you and your whole place of St Ottilien.
Our welcome at the airport by Pater Frederik and Mr Carl
Lazzari was such a great moment. And on our way to St
Ottilien, the snow, which we were seeing for the first time
in our lives, looked like moths, or tiny delicate butterflies
during the summers here in Zimbabwe.
We received a very warm welcome from you all despite
the fact that we don’t speak your language, and the fact
we come from Africa. Both of us enjoyed our visit to the
school - my wife sitting in the art room being drawn by
the senior students was such an honour and a lifetime’s
memory in our longest trip overseas. Of all, not to for-
get the delicious food we ate each morning, lunch, and
supper. The friendly attitude found there has a very loud
voice to the community and to visitors. The people there
practise what they are there for, and this is not found in
many places.
I didn’t really know what I was going to look like after I
was painted, because to me, this was a very strange thing
in my life. But with the great experience of Carl Lazzari, I
looked similar to other black people in the region I come
from. As I have already said, it was a great privilege and
honour for my wife and I to be among great men and
women of the white world. Many thanks to the artist and
to the authorities of St Ottilien, Deutschland, for allowing
us to stay at no expense from our own pockets - and, as
well, we were given love from dear brothers who loved
us so much.
St Ottilien remains in our hearts and we shall surely al-
ways pray for its being there as a light to the Community
and throughout the whole world.
We will never forget you in our daily prayers.
Nyanga, Zimbabwe March 2005
143
144
BROTHER ANSGAR
The Procurator and the Money Mongers
Christian teaching was never fond of money. The expul-
sion of the money mongers by Jesus set a first example of
this attitude. Money and religion do not form easy com-
pany anyway, but in Christianity it means trouble. St Paul
was the first to feel it. His collection for the poor of Je-
rusalem raised suspicion and he had to defend himself.
On the other hand these early examples tell us that social
welfare will not be available without some cash. So what
do we do?
Being the procurator of a missionary congregation, I
have to make sure our social activities can be financed
and that the pastoral work continues without interrup-
tion. The good news means: “The blind will see, the lame
will walk and the poor will hear the message”. If this be-
comes true, people with money will be ready to share
their wealth with those who have less than they have.
This is a good and accepted Christian principle. However
this is not as easy as it sounds. For how can this sharing
be organised? There must be Christians who are ready to
deal with money professionally. Procurators like me be-
long to this group of people. Proper administration also
means to use the law of the market, to assess the need of
the recipients and to control the use of donated money.
This creates the impression that a procurator is a money
man. He has the power of saying yes or no. He is exposed
to suspicion and jealousy.
Sometimes I feel that there is not much help and advice
in the gospel about how to deal with money. Christian
tradition though has developed some ideas during the
centuries of church history. The religious orders especially
wrote down rules and regulations for how an attitude to-
wards wealth should be developed. St Benedict was one
of the first to give a concept of community property. For
him a monk must not own anything, but the community
can do so.
The combination of biblical virtues and the practical ex-
perience in history is my guideline for how to deal with
money. First I should be independent of money. That
means my actions should not be ruled by money, but by
Christian values. I give a very simple example. Somebody
would like to give me a donation. He tells me that he can
only visit me during the hour of prayer. Then I will tell
him to visit me at another time of the day. Our prayer life
should not be ruled by money, even if it is for the benefit
of the poor. I think this is what so enraged Jesus: the serv-
ices of GOD were mixed up with money. We as men re-
ligious should be aware of this temptation that the work
for the poor may outshine the service for GOD. The other
way round is as bad if religious worship is used for accu-
mulating wealth. Many shrines are corrupted by greedy
tradespeople who use the naivety of the faithful to get
money. In such circumstances Jesus could come again
and act as he did in the temple.
I have to deal with big sums of money and I often feel
the power of it. Whenever I enter a bank I am treated as a
rich cutomer although nothing belongs to me. Gifts are
offered, invitations given and flattering words are in the
air. I can overcome these temptations only by an active
spiritual life. I am never sure of myself and try to be as cor-
rect as possible. Yet the doubts of failure stay. The expres-
sion on my face in the painting reflects these doubts very
well. As a Christian, as a monk dealing with money, I never
know whether my actions are not spoilt by my own self
deceit or hunger for power. Somehow I even feel some
sympathy for the money mongers. Don’t they have chil-
dren to feed? Were they not forced to look for means to
145
survive? What actually did they do wrong?
Their example shows me that even the approval of reli-
gious authority is no guarantee for correct actions. I have
to develop my own consciousness and readjust it now
and then. My human weakness depends on prayer and
the solidarity of my fellow Christians. Only in active com-
munity life I may act as Jesus wanted me to do.
Benedictine Monastery of St Ottilien,
Bavaria May 2006

146
 THE ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM month: January

148
149
Principal Portrait: Orii Ishizuka
The piazza of Saint Ottilien has the character of a small
city centre - perhaps in northern Italy. This composition is
divided horizontally across its centre. The lower half con-
tains the crowd welcoming Jesus into ‘Jerusalem’. How-
ever, this is the identical crowd which would later shout,
“Crucify him!” The upper half is ominously unwelcoming.
The moon wanes. A dark sky of brooding blue devours
bare trees seen as spiders‘ webs against the tented roof of
the monastic Porter’s Lodge and the searchlight of a heli-
copter seeking this revolutionary man Christ. This danger-
ous Messiah, this Jesus whose persuasive teaching pro-
claims human equality and spiritual purpose. The crowd
comprises students from St. Ottilien´s Rhabanus Maurus
Gymnasium, monks and other adults all of whom I will
now endeavour to indentify.
On the left are Ludwig Mert and Markus - brother to Mar-
tin Mayr earlier drawn playing saxophone. Ludwig and
Markus are the DVD filmmakers who are recording these
paintings. Greeting Christ is Saint Ottilien’s porter Brother
Almerick. “Do you require a room for the night, Jesus?” he
might be asking. Then left to right along the back row:
Ann-Sophie Neumann is waving a little nervously - per-
haps she cannot believe this really is the Jesus Christ she’d
heard so much of; Pater Eduardo was painted in Rome,
this canvas transported there with The Annunciation’s. You
may detect a different light to his face - it is Roman rath-
er than Bavarian! From Rabanal, his handsomely bearded
Spanish compatriot Juan Antonio is next. Then Pater Sieg-
fried - librarian to the impressive bibliotek and creator of
the monastery’s interactive Website. Blonde Heidi who is
a supervisor in the Retreat House. Brother Kornelius - di-
rector of Saint Ottilien’s Fair Trade import business. Tho-
mas Hoch has already been mentioned in my Introduc-
tion. Andreas Janikowsy’s words follow soon. From the
150
bookshop, and, like Andreas, a monastic oblate, Frau Lenz
- whose sister is a Benedictine nun in Northern Germa-
ny. Between Andreas and Frau Lenz is Brother Marianus.
Second row from the left: Julian Rind earnestly reaches
towards Christ - transferring to the Messiah’s receiving
fingers a drop of Holy Water. This is an intimate Benedic-
tine ritual. Moreover: Julian’s father is a Luftwaffe helicop-
ter pilot whose Leonado da Vinci’s flying machine often
passes over Saint Ottilien on its way to Landsberg´s mili-
tary airport. And even moreso: some years ago, Julian’s
father was seconded, with his family, to a Royal Air Force
air sea rescue station at Boulmer, on the Northumberland
coast in Northeastern England. As it happens, I live only
half an hour’s drive from Boulmer. Consequently I think
that Julian knows as much about my region of England as
I do... and probably more about my home city of Newcas-
tle upon Tyne and its famous football club, too! One final
reason for the helicopter in the top right corner has, of
course, nothing whatever to do with Julian or his father.
It is that this Christ is a pacific troublemaker. With his ide-
as of compassionate equality he represents an overthrow
of dictatorial tyranny, of the oppression of an individual’s
freedom of belief. In the blackness of a cold January night,
the predatory beam of the State attempts to locate and
keep track of this revolutionary voice. Over his blood red
top Christ wears a backpack similar to many owned by
gymnasium students. Purchased from department stores
in Munich, they bear the trade label 4 YOU. As you view
the painting, consider that Christ is truly coming to Jeru-
salem - FOR YOU?
Vividly black-haired Tanja Maier converses with Sara
Höppner in her rainbow sweater, and blonde Tanja de
Wever, notices out of the corner of her eye that some-
thing important is happening. Then white-tennis-band-
ed Lukas Wille lost in far-away thought. Esther Joas. I met
Esther when she was a fluent English-speaking final-year
Gymnasium student who generously volunteered to ef-
fortlessly translate Deutsche documents and letters for
me. As she departs the picture, not only are she and part-
ner Alex now my friends, but Esther is mother to tiny but
delicately wonderful Julius Emmanual - all of five-months
old. Last Sunday I was invited to Julius Emmanual’s bap-
tism not far away by train at picturesque Utting on Am-
mersee, spacious lake with passenger paddle boats and
steamers, with the numerous white sails of yachts making
trim patterns on its azure vastness. In the verdant church
garden, a panoply of flowers, families, and friends. Good
things to eat and drink and, kind to old Carl, much Eng-
lish spoken. Social and personal happiness unreserved. A
truly perfect, a truly flawless day. Esther Joas’s words will
follow. Right of Orii Ishizuka are black-quiffed Stefan Ul-
lmann and blonde Klemens Zernikow almost hidden in
the throng. Above-left of Orii, Sunita Nitschke strives for a
better view of Christ arriving - perhaps Sunita knows this
visitor is special. And, in the middle foreground is Thomas
Tieschiky... and another mini-tale!
When Thomas first came to my studio for this portrait,
I had already made an ink drawing of him in school in
the same context as others earlier reproduced here. I ex-
plained that I wished to paint him standing, waiting to
give Jesus a welcoming present. Two sessions later the
head-shoulders-portrait was done - but lacking hands
and gift. I asked Thomas to go away and consider what
he might wish to give to Jesus - that it would be his deci-
sion and not mine. Off he went. I suppose I half-expected
him to choose a FIFA black and white football or a piz-
za or a bottle of Coke or lemonade or something ‘boyish’.
Several days later, when he returned, Thomas said quietly,
“The Holy Grail”. I’m sure I gawked at him in surprise. “Have
you seen the Indiana Jones films?”, he asked. Still dumb
with surprise, I nod my head. “Well you know the last one
where Harrison Ford has to cross a Bridge of Faith?” An-
other nod. “And he throws dust on the Bridge so he can
see it and goes into that cave where there’s an old knight
guarding lots of expensive goblets and things?” I actually
manage a “Yes”. His enthusiam mounting, Thomas contin-
ues, “And to save his Dad’s life, he has to choose which is
the real Holy Grail, and it’s that small plain one at the back?
Well, that’s what I want to give Jesus...” a pause, ...“ Is that
OK?” Deeply touched, I look at Thomas. “Is it OK, is it OK?
Thomas it’s wonderful, absolutely wonderful! Thank you
for thinking so carefully about this. It’s really great, thanks
again!” Gerhard, Thomas’s father, brought to my studio
the locally-crafted blue goblet which I painted as held by
Thomas. When the portrait was finished, I was honoured
to be presented with the goblet by the Tieschikys as a
“thank you” for painting their son. All in all, I think, a de-
lightful little story: I hope you share my opinion.
The principal portrait is Orii McDermott (neé Ishizuka).
You will recall that on the upright piano in Christ in His
Father’s Workshop is sheet music, an opened score. It is
the first page of Robert Schumann’s Phantasie in C op 17 -
probably his greatest work for solo piano. This commem-
orates a recital which Orii bravely gave during the war in
Gracanica - a bombarded town in northern Bosnia . The
concluding piece in her recital was the Schumann Phan-
tasie. As performed by Orii in those adverse circumstanc-
es, the Phantasie’s final movement did indeed feel like an
entry into some mysteriously sublime Jerusalem. Follow-
ing Orii’s own thoughts concerning her principal portrait
in this painting, I recount the story of that epic piano re-
cital in Gracanica.
151
 Orii Ishizuka with her nearly finished portrait in The Entry Into Jerusalem

152
153
ORII McDERMOTT - ISHIZUKA
Carl Lazzari - an artist who sees music
Carl’s passion for music was the impulse that started our
unique friendship. Since 1989 he was a regular presence
in the Music Department at the University of Newcastle
upon Tyne, England. He sat quietly but attentively at the
front of King’s Hall drawing professional musicians and
music students alike on his trademark black paper sketch-
book. His drawings were often produced in the heat of
rehearsals and concerts, capturing the tensions of musi-
cians at work. What was always prominent in those draw-
ings was Carl’s passion for live music.
As a first year, Japanese, music student, I struggled, com-
municating through a second language. However, Carl
has always encouraged me to let my piano playing speak
for me, and helped to provide me with opportunities to
perform, whether in the country houses of Northeast Eng-
154
land, or bombed cinema halls of Bosnia. This meant more
for me than mere peer support in difficult times, and I am
very grateful for his continuous trust in my musicianship
(and for keeping his eye on my practising!).
My invitation to St Ottilien’s monastery to sit for Carl in-
volved a Bosnian Memorial piano recital in the Rittersaal,
but it was also a special occasion for me. To experience
the Benedictine spirituality with St Ottilien’s community
and with my husband Séamus, even if only for a few days,
was both rewarding and humbling.
To be part of such a unique commission illustrating the
life of Jesus and the St Ottilien community through the
work of Carl and his art is one I shall always cherish for the
profound memories it rekindles. As I speak through the
piano, Carl sings with colour.
London, England March 2006
The Entry Into Jerusalem
- the beginnings...
... later developing with Orii’s portrait and also those of Thomas, Julian, and Tanja.

155
156
ESTHER JOAS
Dedicated to Carl
It’s all about trust. As one who’s being painted I have to
trust myself to be myself, to feel confident about the way
I appear, and the way I pose. I have to be able to tolerate
the painter’s piercing look that rips off any kind of protect-
ing mask and leaves nothing but my blank self. I can almost
feel how the mask dismantles - it dangles from my face.
In order to open myself that much to a painter, it is cru-
cial to trust him. Trust that he accepts me the way I am
and trust that he will not make vulnerable my blank self.
A highly concentrated and sensible atmosphere fills the
room. I can almost see the waves of thoughts and feel-
ings between the painter and me and between the paint-
er and his painting. What an experience!
Hofstetten, Bavaria November 2003
157
BEYOND THE RIVER SAVA

158
There was no moon. It was well after midnight. Orii, Pe-
ter, and myself, watched the lights of a great timber ve-
hicle-raft creeping slowly on an enormous hawser cable
strung across the River Sava. It was coming only for us.
There was nobody else about, for it was long after a ten
o’clock curfew. Now that the only road bridge had recent-
ly been destroyed by Serbian artillery, there was no oth-
er means of crossing this wide eastern border between
Bosnia and Croatia. Following repeated flashings of our
vehicle’s headlamps, in the darkness signalling our pres-
ence, we now waited by Peter’s minibus in which, earlier
that same night, we’d nearly died in the Sava. Peter and I
were bringing my friend and colleague, Orii, from Zagreb
Airport on an arduous seventeen-hour return journey to
the small town of Gracanica near Tuzla in Northern Bos-
nia. We were exhausted and not a little anxious. In par-
ticular, Orii had just flown from Tokyo to Heathrow, Lon-
don, where, almost instantly, she had boarded a flight to
Zagreb. Although the Dayton Peace Talks were planned
to commence soon, the Bosnian War was yet a terrible
reality with, in particular, the Croatian Army in sporadic
thrusts attempting to reclaim territories it had lost to re-
sisting Serbian and Bosnian Serb Forces. Fortunately for
us it seemed, this action was mainly in and around Bihac
to the west. However, in reality the entire country was, in
a military context, unpredictable, volatile, and desperately
unsafe.
Peter and I had half-expected the Sava raft not to be fer-
rying after curfew. But here it was slowly approaching to
collect us, to land us in what was then commonly known
as The Federation Territory. This was a supposedly ‘safe’
corridor for road transport from the Sava into northern
Bosnia. It was guarded by American troops who had re-
cently come into ex-Jugoslavia to join the UN Internation-
al Peace-keeping Force - IFOR now redesignated as SFOR.
Nevertheless, in this area there had been a number of hi-
jackings and indiscriminate killings perpetrated by local
warlords. Hence the shared anxiety of Peter and me. Peter
was here for the first time. This was my third of five Bos-
nian Aid missions attempting to assist the conflict’s dis-
possessed refugees and orphaned children.
Peter climbed wearily into the driver’s seat and waited. He
and I had shared the driving - it was now again his turn.
Orii and I stood side by side in the night. She said to me
in a whisper, “Look at the stars, Carl. They are so beautiful.
If I reach up with my hand, I could pluck one...” And as she
spoke there was that characteristic, so-brief, etched trail
of a shooting star away off to the left. “Yes,” I said, also in a
whisper, “They are truly beautiful tonight... like in Africa.”
Half an hour later we were climbing a steep, semi-crum-
bling slope from the landing jetty and moving off along
an absolutely deserted road. Because of the ever-present
danger of land and anti-personnel mines, Peter drove a
central line well away from grass verges. After a couple of
kilometres we neared the down-shaded floodlights of the
first checkpoint, approached, as always, along an artificial-
ly slalomed lane between obtruding low concrete blocks
necessitating not only a severe decrease in speed but,
every few metres, zig-zag steering as well... all the time
nearing the ominous gunbarrel of a tank positioned to
command all oncoming traffic. Even in the dark we were
aware of our curiosity value - a solitary vehicle travelling in
contravention of the civil curfew, moreover, a British reg-
istration-plated minibus emblazoned with ‘OXFORD UNI-
VERSITY - ROMAN CATHOLIC CHAPLAIN’.
All three of us were in the front bench seat: Peter driv-
ing, Orii in the middle, myself passenger side. The minibus
stopped and was approached by two US Marines - both
heavily armed. The black officer who, to my tired eyes,
seemed about eight feet tall with the Lawrence Taylor-
159
build of a top linebacker, inclined towards me as I wound
down the door window. “Hello,” I said, “... may I introduce
Peter, at the wheel, who is the Roman Catholic Chaplain
to Oxford University; and,” I continued, indicating the Ori-
ental member of our trio, “... here is Orii, who is a Japanese
concert pianist from Tokyo due to give a recital in Gra-
canica next weekend; and my name’s Carl - I’m an artist, a
painter from Newcastle upon Tyne in Northeast England.”
There was silence. “My!” said the officer, his white teeth
shining as he smiled. “My, my!” he repeated as he passed
our proffered passports for inspection by his subordinate
. “We had a serious accident,” I continued, “... nearly a ca-
tastrophe, on the way back from Zagreb. We’d collected
Orii at the airport. We’re many hours behind timetable re-
joining our Magdalen College Aid group. They’ll be very
worried. They’re in Gracanica. That’s where we’re heading,
but we obviously need your advice on what to do now.
We could sleep here in the vehicle... inside or outside your
compound - if you think that’s the safest thing to do?”
The officer straightened. “Sir, our job is to keep this road
open. I don’t know about curfews. They are a matter for
the civil authorities. You’ll know that we have SFOR check-
points at regular intervals along this road. I figure the last
one is pretty close to Gracanica. Peter, there, you drive off
along this road right now. I will ring the next checkpoint.
They will watch out for you, meet and identify you, then
pass you onward, and so on along this road. We’ll hand
you on from checkpoint to checkpoint.” He leaned almost
through the open window, returning the passports as
he surveyed our trio. “And,” he added, smiling even more
broadly, “... because I do not intend to lose such an unusu-
al group of people as yourselves, if you don’t arrive safely
at any of our checkpoints...” He stepped back, a darker
tone to his voice, “If you don’t arrive, I guess we’ll start this
damn war all over again! OK? Off you go...” Peter fired the
engine. As we moved away into the darkness the Marine
160
officer called, “If you have any bother with local police
about this curfew, tell them to ring us... and...” from an in-
creasing distance,”... good luck with your music concert,
Japanese lady...”
We reached Gracanica without further mishap although
in a state of total collapse - Peter and I moreso it seemed
than Orii, whose calm, unflappable demeanour hardly be-
trayed the truth of her having travelled non-stop for more
than twice as long as her male companions. And Orii it was
who one week later gave perhaps Gracanica’s initial piano
recital. The performance took place in the damaged cin-
ema hall. Orii played Bach, Brahms, Ravel, and Schumann
on a badly-used, horrendously out-of-tune upright piano
- one of only two remaining in the bombarded town. This
piano had been pushed on its three remaining castors,
even at times virtually carried, by half a dozen fit men and
unfit me from one side of Gracanica to the other. Dur-
ing the intervening days, Orii had become a celebrity, a
kind of film star for a community which had never be-
fore actually seen any person from the Far East least of all
this beautiful young Japanese woman. Following a day’s
work when many citizens gathered for black ‘Turkish’ cof-
fees or cheap local brandy at either of two streetside cafés
on Gracanica’s short main avenue, the older teenage girls
vied to sit at Orii’s table - to be a sharing party to her for-
eign glamour. I suspected the few remaining young Bos-
nian men also wished to do so but were too nervous and
uncertain.
And now, now on that Saturday early evening, as adver-
tized on scores of quickly-produced, and by voluntary
runners widely-dispersed handbills, here was Orii Ishi-
zuka from Japan, wearing her elegantly long and formal
concert gown brought from Tokyo, sitting at the - bet-
ter tuned-by-her - unexeptional piano, playing Johann
Sebastian Bach. I have in my possession black and white
photographs of the town’s devastation caused by enemy
artillery in the surrounding mountains. Somewhere also
on file I have a black and white photograph of the dead
bodies of townsfolk laid out on the floor of Gracanica’s
mosque - the community’s only large, unfurnished, inte-
rior floorspace. These people had suffered the tribulations
of war. They were now listening to a musician who had
come risking danger, indeed her life, solely to create living
music for them; a young woman who had given concerts
on the finest Steinway grands in great halls in Tokyo and
London who was here with them in their adversity; an
Oriental pianist who wished to give the only gift of spir-
itual succour she could offer - her playing of music.
Most of the compositions performed had been selected
by Orii for their visual associations, as for instance Ravel’s
Une Barque sur l’Océan. Immediately before each piece,
one of Orii’s devoted admirers who was skilled in English
as well as fluent in her own Serbo-Croat stood proudly on
the concert platform informing the audience in transla-
tion of Orii’s description of the imminent work. But the
concluding piece, Schumann’s Phantasie in C, op 17 - also
from visual origins... this I knew she had prepared espe-
cially for the Gracanica recital. For only six brief months
Orii had intensely studied and learned note by note, bar
by bar, movement by movement, repeatedly practising,
rehearsing, reshaping, and thence resolving daily her in-
terpretation of this formidably difficult yet consummate
masterpiece; in my opinion, perhaps Schumann’s great-
est for solo piano.
As Orii began the Phantasie’s opening movement, that
simple yet heroically affirmative descending tenor theme
with its rippling bass accompaniment, I was not the only
person shedding a tear in her audience. And when, even-
tually, the slowly benign and spiritually-blessed conclu-
sion came both to this work and to Orii’s entire recital on
an appallingly inferior piano in, by killing seige, a partially-
ruined building in a ravaged Bosnian town, for divinely
golden moments it felt as if, in some timeless Benedic-
tion, there had never been a war at all.
Carl Lazzari
of one brave musician who is my lifetime’s friend
18/27 October 2002
(My heading picture of the Sava raft coming to ferry us
into Bosnia was, on a very basic painting software pro-
gramme, computer-mouse-drawn from memory and al-
so, in my drawing book, from random, descriptive words
scribbled a few days after Orii’s recital.)
161
162
ANDREAS JANIKOWSKi
Benedictine Oblate, Monastery Bookstore
Employee, Photographer
There are more people who get painted than who paint.
Therefore few who get painted are ever asked to write
about their experience and it is impossible to write vicar-
iously for everyone, because every picture, every painter,
and every painted person is unique and always has a par-
tially unknown history. The word for “art” in German (Kunst)
is derived from the word for “ability” (Können). Carl Lazzari
stands in the tradition of artists with the ability to paint
people who are recognizable as such, which is important
for the common understanding of art’s goal. The Passion
of Christ appeared to me from the beginning to be a good
idea: Carl planned to transpose the chaotically decisive
event to our time, before the door of our house—the pain-
ful belligerence to this monastery of St. Ottilien which is so
dear to us. The works of Lazzari which I had known up until
that point caused me to expect something great.
Carl Lazzari placed me in the painting of Christ’s Entrance
into Jerusalem amidst the waiting crowd in the Ottilien
church plaza, because I would definitely have tried to cap-
ture that historic moment from the perspective of those
observers. Therefore, I had to model for him with my cam-
era while looking at several already-painted faces around
me, some whom I knew and some whom I didn’t. In the
painting I was surrounded mostly by students, by people
all awaiting the same thing: by people like me except that
they were very young. Now and then a glance into Carl’s
familiar face, now complete introversion without conversa-
tion—then it dawned on me that I now belonged to the
category older people. How was I to understand that? I re-
alized for that all my life I had lived with older people who
had more experience and perspective that I, this began
with my grandfather, continued with my teachers, and now
includes the old and older monks. Carl Lazzari was harder
to categorize: on the one hand he seemed calm under-
standing, and elder, on the other curious, agile, and young.
Inspired by the biblical painting, I pondered in which pe-
riod of history I was living. I can somewhat imagine the last
150 years, but the Middle Ages and New Testament Era re-
quire more effort of our imaginative powers, because they
lie much farther back in time. Carl Lazzari’s transposition of
back then into today seems to me an appropriate and fresh
way to stimulate new contemplation of the event.
We are living in one window of history which reflects cer-
tain things, just as other windows have done, and part of
what comes out of the mixture are these twelve paintings.
No, Carl does not appear to typical people as a conven-
tional, older man, and older men are not necessarily wise.
Lazzari however is wise and also generous, understanding,
and tolerant. One really notices this when he talks about
the fate of humanity, especially of the children in Tscher-
nobl or the Yugoslavian war orphans. Because of his family
and life history, he personifies for me Wise Old Europe—
that free Europe of the 60’s and 70’s that openly and en-
thusiastically stood up for the freedom of every single per-
son, even when this seemed hardly possible. Today the
world has completely changed. Economic factors seem to
dictate everything, and no longer those humanistic ideals.
What, however, can point us in the right direction when
not these ideals? Carl Lazzari is a natural and sweet person
who doesn’t come from any theological art school, so his
pictures can speak afresh and give us hope that there will
always be prophetic voices and warnings, which cry out to
heaven against avoidable suffering. Punitive laws are obvi-
ously the worst way to effect change. Prophetic artworks,
though, can communicate insight on the emotional level
and perhaps more deeply influence the future, than stricter
legislation.
In the sacred scriptures and in Biblical art, I often notice
those quiet and humble characters appearing at the pe-
riphery and having a completely trusting attitude toward
God. I think that these are the real bearers, practitioners,
and spreaders of the Faith. In the New Testament are sev-
163
eral ever-present as well as several fleeting characters who
appear along the Lord’s way as quiet, stable companions:
from Mary and Joseph through Elizabeth and Zacharia, the
Apostles and Disciples, Veronica and finally at the end of
the passion to Joseph of Arimathae. They all must have
been filled by the radiance of Christ’s wisdom and good-
ness so that they put themselves completely and sponta-
neously, often at great risk, at his service. In Lazzaris paint-
ings one rediscovers flashes of that kind of biblical passion
in earthly everyday people.
Our painter has been a part of the St. Ottilien routine for
several years. In his quiet way he has celebrated countless
divine offices, let himself be informed about happenings
of the monastery with quiet reserve, and offered his reflec-
tions on St. Ottilien to those who might be interested in his
perspective. We have a good life here in the shadow of the
monastery. All of us who work here at St. Ottilien are a big
family. Carl Lazzari is a quiet member of that family along
with the many Ottilien monks, employees, and students.
He has an understanding manner which makes it easy for
people to become comfortable with him. So it was with
me: already during his second visit to the archabbey, our
friendship began.
What distinguishes the painter from the photographer?
The painter paints an optical likeness of a person or an ob-
ject, but also paints beyond that pure optical image a back-
ground and impressions: he can convey to the art-sensi-
tive human deep connections. The photographer takes
the same objective photographically-scientifically object,
and captures a moment’s image. He can include acces-
sory images and try to capture romantically-idyllic or crass-
ly overstated situations. But the painter composes. On-
ly seldom does the photographer succeed in satisfactori-
ly capturing more than a split second of meaning, for his
instrument is too technical, and considered too manipu-
lation-prone—especially with the development of digital
photography. The photographer encounters criticism and
skepticism about his authenticity, while the painter is met
164
with a more understanding eye. The painter can depict the
entire Middle Ages, bring to expression lyrical glory next to
the slaughter of knights in battle, and all this together in
one picture! Sculptors have similar possibilities. Their ma-
nipulations are considered style and can be more or less
obvious. It is considered somehow honest for them, and
the contemplative even seeks to ponder their manipula-
tions.
I once encountered a very honest painter on the Russian
hill in Geltendorf. Bicycle and empty wine bottle lay in the
grass, the painter nearby. He must get sober for the street
traffic portion of his trip home, he said. He travelled once a
year here in order to drink in the view of St. Ottilien and the
Alps and sought out a day with a certain sunset. As a paint-
er he must once in a while tank up on images and impres-
sions; he didn’t get rich, because he painted only Bavari-
an genre paintings for parlors, restaurants or clubhouses.
He was, however, not unhappy with that, otherwise such
painting would have been impossible. “You must paint
what people will buy.” That clarified to me the until-then
hidden meaning of some artworks. I departed with my
camera. Both, the laborious painter just like the photogra-
pher, have the joy of seeing, capturing, forming the public
eye for the things and situations of the everyday as well
as the unusual. Carl Lazzari’s series spans a period of 2000
years, a not-exclusively European geography, and the last
picture blows even those limits away. These are pictures
impossible for even the cleverest photographer. They arise
from an attention to ideas and their importance.
Not least, the Ottilien book store made its contribution
to the depth of meaning and the success of the pictures.
When Carl is not at St. Ottilien, the sale of our red wine will
diminish somewhat. Wine, as a biblical as well as European
elixir of life, goes so well with the existing paintings. There
are future classics among us. Blessed are they who can al-
ready recognize them! We can be grateful to Archabbot
Jeremias for making Carl Lazzari’s way to St. Ottilien pos-
sible.
 THE AGONY IN THE GARDEN month: February

166
The national flag of ancient Bosnia - drifting neglected in European ice

167
168
Principal Portraits: Ivo and Margharita Bakula

A picture expressly about Bosnia - of that murderous Bos-

nian War. For generations people from all over Europe
holidayed in Jugoslavia, enjoying its welcoming diversity,
its scenery, culture, music, food, and wine. It was indeed
a Garden of Europe. And then the war which destroyed
everything, terminating, perhaps forever, a religious and
ethnic equilibrium which had been long-maintained. Tru-
ly an Agony. The scene of my painting is the small lake ad-
jacent to the Gymnasium. It is winter’s adversity. There are
no leaves, no flowers, no birdsong. There is no warmth,
trust, or comfort. It is a landscape of total denial. On the
island of Bosnia’s garden, Christ is in agony - down on his
hands and knees in the snow. In icy water the Bosnian
flag is half submerged. At the other end of the island is
an anonymous Benedictine monk who stands aloof as if
wilfully denying both the presence and the ordeal of his
Master... as thrice did Saint Peter himself.

The principal portraits are Ivo and Margharita Bakula - ref-

ugees fled from Sarajevo. They lost everything. Yet as a
caring dimension of this Benedictine missionary monas-
tery of Saint Ottilien, they were both temporarily domi-
ciled here. It was my privilege to paint their marital dual-
The Agony beginning
portrait. I am grateful that, surely in painful stress, Ivo and
Margharita have written their own words for this RESUR-
RECTION Handbook.

169
 Ivo and Margharita Bakula in my studio at the end of their final combined portrait session.

170
IVO AND MARGHARITA BAKULA

171
IVO AND MARGHARITA BAKULA
This Monastery was our Salvation
The war was so terrible that we do not want to think about
it—only forget. Otherwise the nightmares come back.
Better to forget it. We lost everything. Everything. Ivo had
lost 20 kilos. He was just a nose on a bag of bones. We
escaped Serjievo and stayed in Croatia for several months.
Noodles to eat: pasta, pasta, pasta. Then a Caritas bus
was going to Germany and we got on it. It came to Mu-
nich. We were there in a church with all the other people,
the refugees, and everyone was being taken to places to
stay. We did not speak German, so we just stood there as
the crowd kept getting thinner. Then a priest came up to
us and said we could go with him. It was Fr. Claudius, the
prior of St. Ottilien. He asked, “Where are your bags...your
things?” We had only the clothes we were wearing. Every-
thing else gone.
He took us with a couple of others to St. Ottilien. We ate in
the old dining room in the guest wing of the monastery.
Schnitzel, potatoes, vegetables...oh my the food! It was so
wonderful. Archabbot Notker came to the dining room,
this elegant man with a pectoral cross, and welcomed eve-
rybody individually. He was so hospitable. The prior said
to Ivo, “Br. Aurelian will give you clothes,” so he went to the
tailor shop where the monks get their clothes. They didn’t
have women’s clothes, though. We stayed in the retreat
house for a long time—in separate rooms. Then we got
to move over to this apartment. It was so wonderful. Mar-
gharita cried and cried, and Fr. Claudius kept asking, “What
is wrong?” It was simply so wonderful that we couldn’t be-
lieve it.
172
Br. Markus, the subprior, was amazingly kind. He was simply
an amazing man—a heavy equipment mechanic, and the
boss of everyone who worked for the monastery. He no-
ticed everything, all the details everywhere; made sure eve-
rything got done, but loved life, too. His mechanic garage
was the cultural center of St. Ottilien: always cars parked
there, people visiting, he was simply wonderful. He would
help anybody in need, anybody, and was so easy to talk to.
But not just the prior, subprior, and archabbot: everyone
was so kind and so helpful. St. Ottilien was our saviour. We
don’t know what we would have done otherwise. We were
always religious Catholics, and God somehow got us to this
place—a monastery. It is a miracle. These monks are very
good people, truly Christian.
Br. Markus became like a brother to us. His real brother, Br.
Richard, is also a monk here, and they have a sister who is
a nun, too. After Br. Markus found out that he had cancer,
we spent even more time with him. Ivo would drive him
to his chemotherapy. His last week we were at the hospi-
tal with him. He was so skinny, but still the same as ever.
He said, “God must need a repairman. I shall have to pack
my toolbox and get ready to go.” When he died, we were
there with him and Br. Richard and their sister. It was such
a sacred event.
We can relate to the Jesus in this painting because of our
own suffering. And we know that the monks here are will-
ing to help people who are suffering. This monastery was
our salvation when there was nowhere to turn.
 THE CRUCIFIXION month: March

174
The Crucifixion - early days.

175
Principal Portrait: Krdzic Munelera
Location: the monastic cemetary, the Friedhof Sankt Ot-
tilien. It is truly Golgotha - the place of bones. During
March 2003, from a position across the railway station’s
road, I carefully evaluated its topography, its elevation, its
trees. Here, now, in the painting, at the precise moment of
Christ’s tortured physical demise, as though by a haloed
satellite dish, there is an intense accumulation of Cosmic
Light... Heaven’s Fireball. Resurrection is in the offing... Al-
ways, there must be hope. As monks come in procession
to their cemetary, pear flowers bloom in espaliers around
the elevated south-facing Refectory windows. From Win-
ter comes Spring. From Death comes forth Life. Honey
from the lion. Always hope: men, women and children
who suffered obscene abominations have taught me - al-
ways to hope...
The principal portrait is a Bosnian Muslim girl, Krdzic
Munelera who, in 1995, was drawn by me in the refugee
village of Doborovci near Tuzla. In the absence of Munelera
herself, that drawing is this principal portrait. Albeit faith-
176
ful to my original lines and her name written by her own
hand, it is deliberately painterly rather than being simply
an imitative replica of a pen drawing. Despite assistance
from two officers in German Military Intelligence - who
had served in Bosnia, and one of the principal portraits,
together with my own direct contacts with the United Na-
tions High Commission for Refugees, it has not been pos-
sible to rediscover Munelera, or even to ascertain that she
is alive. As yet unpublished, my autobiographical story of
the Bosnian War, the novel To The Incarnate Rose, is partly
dedicated to waiflike and gentle Munelera, a young girl
who fled bewildered from Srebrenica. In the novel’s Fore-
word I promise to find her again: O Munelera, I am, I am
still trying to find you. The novel describes my two meet-
ings with Munelera at Doborovci - our simple joy shared:
our anguish shared eternally. Only weeks ago new Bos-
nian friends of mine contacted a ‘Mother’s Association’ as
part of my, now our, continuing endeavours to discover
Munelera somewhere still alive and well. Krdzic is a very
common family name. But, always, there must be hope:
even in a savagely barbaric crucifixion, surely hope?
On this brief drawing made in 1995 in the refugee village of Doborovci, at my accustomed request,
endearingly gentle Munelera wrote her name clearly and carefully in her own hand

177
178
Flowers of The Crucifixion.

179
 Drawing a war-crippled patriarch in the refugee village of Doborovci. There were few men. We had just distributed
assorted sweets to the children. The girl in pink blowing bubblegum, summarises for me, life’s bitter comedy.
My sincere apology to whichever unidentified Oxford University colleague took this photograph.

180
In a Benedictine painting studio: The Crucifixion and myself.
Photograph by Andreas Janikowski

181
182
KRDZIC MUNELERA -
written for her in sadness by Carl Lazzari
During 1996, with Oxford and American University col-
leagues, I was based in the small Bosnian town of Gracani-
ca not far from Tuzla. This Anglo/American expedition was
organized and led by Catherine Stewart of The Baptism. In
1996 the war was nominally ended. Yet the country re-
mained broken and destroyed. Despite the peacekeep-
ing presence of United Nations troops, pay-back murders
were commonplace, and daily, undetectable plastic anti-
personnel mines continued war’s killing and maiming. I
possess a large official military map of Bosnia given me
by a British IFOR intelligence officer. It is a charting of the
known and identified minefields. It is hard to believe that
so much of an entire country could be patterned by ir-
regular areas of diagonal red lines. In their own nation of
birth thousands of totally dispossessed people, in ruthless
ethnic division, huddled in often terrible camps and in-
adequate makeshift accommodation. Widowed mothers
became prostitutes to feed their children. Teenage boys
and girls, enforced drug addicts, were shipped out of the
country into terminally-short, unspeakable existances
as sex-slaves in the international market. All over Bosnia
families had been reduced by killing, many hundreds of
families eradicated entirely. This is a brief contextual back-
ground for the story of Krdzic Munelera.
Virtually every day, from Gracanica, in one or both of our
minibuses, we would slowly drive an unsafe winding
mountain road cratered by artillery fire. In this densely
forested valley our destination was the refugee village of
Doborovci. With its Scandinavian-style chalets nestling
amongst tall trees thinning at the foot of a forested slope,
this hamlet had been constructed by Norwegian engi-
neers financed by their country’s Government. It was built
to house victims of Srebrenica. Srebrenica - what a night-
mare word the name of that small southern town has be-
come. In Europe it was the worst atrocity since WW2. Sre-
brenica... in 1995, eight thousand unarmed Muslim civil-
ian men and boys were taken into the forest above the
town and, as in a butcher’s yard, there they were slaugh-
tered. Doborovci housed the inhabitants - mostly women
and children - who had fled the horror of their homes in
Srebrenica. There were a few men, but mostly maimed by
war as in the preceding photograph.
I had two usual locations for my work - ironically neither
is shown in that photograph! The first was the laundry ar-
ea. This was a clearing in the trees which was strung with
lines. Here after washing, garments and assorted fabrics
would be hung up to dry. Here also, on a group of fall-
en logs, and with their morning’s task accomplished, the
women would converse for an hour or so. Their children
would play there too. It was a mini-society attempting to
salvage, indeed to resurrect, fragments of simple normal-
ity from utter devastation. The women were relaxed and
agreeable; the children unfrightened and at playful ease.
It was a good environment in which to draw.
In Doborovci there was one shop - emphatically non-
Scandinavian! It was actually a large wooden box the rear
of which was grounded firmly on the hillside. Against the
angled slope, to preserve a level interior floor, the front
of the box was supported by timber columns. The front
door was therefore rather high above ground level. This
had required construction of a timber staircase of six
steps to reach the small square landing immediately out-
side the door. Meagrely stocked with such as flour, sugar,
salt, tinned goods, coffee, tea, dried milk, and cigarettes,
the otherwise bare shop was effectively managed by Mu-
ratovic Smajo and his wife Alija - themselves refugees. As
I write this my notes are in England: I may be wrong, but I
seem to recollect some UN rationing system, perhaps by
183
coupons. It’s now ten years ago. I’m not sure. But certain-
ly these fine people had neither money nor the means
by which to earn it. Smajo, I think from an exploding gre-
nade, had the most appalling permanent damage to his
wrist - it seemed impossible that his hand was still able to
function. A miracle? I’d made drawings of both Smajo and
Alija before it dawned upon me that their spartan and on-
ly shop would be my ideal second working place. In the
shade inside the doorway. People passing in and out. A
chair for me. Another one invitingly empty. Perhaps the
shop’s trade would increase through the curiosity of vil-
lagers keen to see what the old Englishman was up to!
So, as well as I’m able in a storyteller’s narrative, I have
now set the scene for that young Bosnian girl, the Krdzic
Munelera of my memory-in-tears.
After one long day at the washing area, I’d nearly finished.
I checked my watch. Half an hour before we departed for
our frugal evening meal in Gracanica, and thereafter to
our lodgings assorted! Also in Gracanica was the com-
mercial photographer who possessed his town’s only re-
maining functioning photocopier. Every night from my
drawing book, in a financial agreement between us, I
copied the day’s every drawing. Later that night I collated
and personally signed with an added sentiment all those
copies to be given to their ‘sitters’ the very next day. But
now, this Bosnian afternoon, I checked my watch again
- less than half an hour... even twenty minutes. I was be-
sieged, indeed encircled by young teenaged macho boys
wishing me to draw them. Beyond the belligerent circus,
I saw a girl standing isolated, a fairish-brown-haired girl
standing alone and watching. Such a gentle girl... perhaps
nine years old. She had such gentleness. In one of those
inexplicable impromptu decisions made in life, I held
high my drawing book, wiggled my right hand against its
white page as if in the act of drawing, then invitingly ex-
184
tended that hand towards her with an encouraging smile,
and thence back to the sheet of white paper. I bowed my
head to her. Immediately the long-skirted girl respond-
ed and came towards me. Clearing a path through the
youthful masculine tumult, I gallantly motioned her to sit.
But, gently, almost impassively smiling, no, she wished to
stand. And so I drew her - these too-quick penlines few,
simple, and ordinary. And yet they possessively contain
one of the profound Truths of my own lengthening life. As
is my custom, our drawing completed, I asked her to pen
on the drawing in her own hand her name. This young
girl did so... simply and carefully... Krdzic Munelera. In sign
language I explained about the photocopy I’d make that
evening which I would personally sign and give to her the
next day. I was helped by two Muslim women who’d al-
ready been given their own copies.
Then I hurried away to our impatiently awaiting minibus.
The following day Munelera didn’t appear, either at the
washing area or at the shop. When such happened, I had
an arrangement with Smajo and Alija that any unclaimed
drawing would be stored face down on a clean shelf be-
hind the shop’s serving counter. Munelera’s drawing was
duly placed there. Clearly it was a natural pleasure for
me to be able to give my drawing to its recipient. But if
that could not be, it was important, as soon as possible,
to endorse trust in a promise given. I think it was prob-
ably a Thursday. Some of our group had to drive down to
Sarajevo to make contact with an NGO - a humanitarian
Non-Governmental Organization. We departed Friday, re-
turned Tuesday.
The following Wednesday afternoon I’m drawing a teen-
age lad in the shop watched by a couple of customers.
It is a blisteringly hot sunny day. As I’m drawing, out of
the corner of my eye I detect a shadow in the doorway’s
glare. I turn to see Munelera standing on the elevated
landing. I smile in greeting. Also smiling, she responds by
bowing her head. Soon my drawing is finished. One of
the shoppers replaces the boy. During this change-over I
look again in a friendly manner grinning at Munelera. She
smiles. I notice she’s wearing a gleaming white Tee shirt
with a circular mandala-like pattern on the front, and a
long dark blue skirt. I think, ‘She’s wearing her best new
clothes. Must be a special day for her’. I do the body lan-
guage bit - gripping a fold of my own Tee shirt and then
shorts, pointing to her shirt and skirt with a thumbs up
sign while nodding my appreciation. She smiles again. I
commence the next drawing. Suddenly I feel a twinge of
anxiety. Her signed copy... surely... it’s nearly a week since...
I dart a glance at the passive girl standing in hot sunshine.
Surely? Deliberately placing my open drawing book on
the floor with my uncapped pen, I gesture to the sitter
with upraised pacific palm and walk across to the wall
shelves behind the counter. Four face-down drawings. At
the bottom is Munelera’s. Across the room I display the
drawing to her. She positively beams in radiance - eagerly
and repeatedly nodding her head. Beating my clenched
fist againt my chest in what is certainly a universal ges-
ture, I think how stupid I am not to have understood her
silent presence.
Out on the landing I give Munelera her drawing. Hold-
ing the A4 sheet in both hands she inspects it with a furi-
ous, dedicated concentration. Ten, twenty seconds pass
by. The girl looks up at me and gravely bows her head. I
watch her walk down three steps where she stops to study
her drawing again. More seconds before another turn to
me on the landing and, unsmiling, another very thought-
ful bow of her head. Three more steps and she’s stand-
ing on the hard earth path facing away from me. More
silent scrutiny of the paper before she folds it very care-
fully, not in a damaging crease, but in a generous curve so
that both ends can be held protectively between thumb
and index finger of one hand. That intelligent task com-
pleted, Munelera turns to me. Her young face is serious -
maybe in introspection. There’s a pause before slowly and
solemnly she bows from the waist. When she straightens,
there is a faint smile at her mouth. Suddenly, Munelera
pivots, throws her arms in the air and, in a state of obvious
happiness, procedes to skip away up the path, her long
skirt dancing as she does so. Her joyously animated figure
disappears into the forest.
I never saw her again. But, wait, this story is not yet fin-
ished.
Two days later as I was preparing to return to England,
the camp interpreter mentioned that Munelera had
shown him her drawing with which she was so pleased.
He thought it was great for her, and asked what I knew
of her. “Absolutely nothing at all,” I’d replied, “except that
she seemed a nice girl”. He then told me what he knew of
Munelera: that she had been one of an extended family
clan of about fourteen - mother, father, brothers, sisters,
grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins; that all had been
killed at different times and places during the war; that
she’d lived in Srebrenica with her father and remaining
brother both of whom had died in that massacre; that
now she had no living relatives, no blood kin. I was hor-
rified.
I later reflected on the evident joy my ordinary drawing
had given young Munelera, and I wept - and have done
so for ten years. O Munelera, please be alive and happy
somewhere on this unjust planet.
A large part of my lengthy college and university career
as principal lecturer and head of department was wearily
185
spent on seemingly important committees and boards
defending and upholding the worth of art education - in-
deed of art itself. I felt obliged to provide measured aca-
demic arguments together with extracted dimensions of
cultural history. If then I’d known what I do now, I would
simply, again and again, have told the story of a young
Muslim girl called Krdzic Munelera.
The great Twelfth Century Benedictine abbess Hildegard
of Bingen once famously described herself as, “A feather
on the breath of God.” It is a phrase beautiful both in its
humility and its stoic belief. With all my heart I wish that
Munelera’s Allah has breathed as kindly upon her.
186
(23 June 2006. A few hours ago Brother Otto and I hap-
pened to meet Margharita Bakula who reported that, a
Krdzic Munelera had been traced to Switzerland, and she
still had a sister living somewhere else. Is this the same
Krdzic Munelera? Had the camp interpreter exaggerated
‘my’ Munulera’s tragic family circumstances? I do hope so.
In a war there is confusion, making dispassionate objec-
tivity almost impossible. In life’s uncertain turbulance is
there a retrospective blessing? Yes, I hope so.)
NINE DRAWINGS OF SAINT OTTILIEN
(from many made in 1997)

Saint Ottilien’s Benedictine monks in solemn procession entering their archabbey church for evening Vespers.

188
In 1998, on Benedictine pilgrimage, monks from Saint Ottilien at prayer in the German Chapel of the Vatican

189
 During Orii Ishizuka’s Bosnian Memorial Piano Recital in the monastery’s Rittersaal,
Archabbot Jeremias Schroeder listens as she performs Schumann’s Phantasie in C, op 17.
190
 The colossal, almost cathedral-like silos of Saint Ottilien’s farm. Between them - a lengthy and physically
demanding agricultural stairway ascending slowly upwards to - birds flying wondrously free in... in Heaven?
191
 Friendly 1395 posed so patiently for me as I made this study, which I thought was quite good. With dozens of my other
drawings in diversity, the very next day, it was displayed on exhibition screens in the monastery’s Bibliotek. Several weeks
later, a diabolical monk - and yes there are a few! - asked if I had enjoyed my dinner. “It was great - as always,” I innocently
replied. With a malevolent gleam in his eyes, he reparted, “ Quite right - we have just eaten ‘your’ 1395!”

192
Monks from Saint Ottilien celebrating Mass at Montecassino at the conclusion of their Benedictine pilgrimage.

193
 The archabbey church of Saint Ottilien in penumbra.

194
Some of the bells of Saint Ottilien.

195
 The spire of Saint Ottilien seen amidst autumn’s harvested fields.

196
 THE RESURRECTION month: April

198
199
Principal Portrait: and there are three of them. Three? A Trinity? Since the
Archabbot Jeremias Schroeder OSB Industrial Revolution and the development of electron-
ics and advanced medicine, it has often been stated that
During 2001/2002, during a depressively low period in the worlds of religious belief and modern science are in
my personal life, as I strove to actively prepare and plan antipathy. But this proposition is clearly untrue and un-
in England, my intention had always been to honour tenable. Here in the final painting of this series, I relate
and portray Jeremias Schroeder in this final, culminat- and depict a most awesomely modern of scientific dis-
ing picture of the RESURRECTION series. It was impos- coveries with its principal portrait of Jeremias Schroeder
sible to contemplate any other individual concluding OSB - Archabbot of this great Benedictine monastery of
and passing onto our future this dynamic saga of Divin- Saint Ottilien and its international community. Two thou-
ity. Around the portrait of Jeremias I had devised an ab- sand years after the Crucifixion, Archabbot Jeremias and
stract environment based on yellow - the colour of the his congregation are leaders in the ever-onward world-
sun, of golden tesseraed Byzantine Heavens, of all life it- wide mission of benevolent Christianity.
self. Then, returned to Bavaria, one afternoon browsing in
Hugendubel’s superb international bookshop in Marien-
platz and I discovered a book of American photographs
of outer space. At one picture in particular I stared in won-
der... and, at length, I considered. Days later, on a Friday
as I recall, at Deeba, the splendid Pakistani restaurant on
Barerstrasse, over a tasty lunch, I conversed with librarian
and good friend Thomas ‘Alf’ Hoch - portrayed in The Entry
Into Jerusalem. I recounted my attraction to this surprising
image. “No problem,” he repled. Later that afternoon espe-
cially for me Alf downloaded freely from the NASA web-
site this print-photograph which completely transformed
my semi-determined designs for this conclusive painting.
My sincere thanks, Herr Hoch!

In 1995, in the U.S.A., scientists at the University of Arizo-

na processed digital data transmitted from a NASA space
probe. They produced this extraordinary picture of three
gaseous columns - each light-years tall, and located near
where the ‘Big Bang’ commenced at the centre of our uni-
verse. Light-years at the Beginning? I’m definitely no sci-
entist. A light-year... I cannot comprehend what a light-
year might be. But, apparently these columns are the es- The Resurrection beginning -
sential creative stuff of matter from which stars are born... before its major change of strategic character

200
Archabbot Jeremias Schroeder in my studio.

201
202
ARCHABBOT JEREMIAS SCHROEDER OSB
The Twelfth Picture
I am sitting in the twelfth picture of this series. The other
pictures have a Bavarian flavour: nine are set in St. Ottil-
ien, one in Tutzing. The twelfth goes beyond this. It shows
three gaseous columns in the Aquila nebulae M16, some
70.000 Trillion kilometers away from Upper Bavaria. These
columns give birth to new stars which is why they are also
called the “columns of creation”.
It is not easy to sit exposed like this. My foreground col-
leagues in the other pictures of this series have a back-
ground which is tangible and familiar, often charming. We
can imagine how those scenes are full of the smell of the
land and the season. In front of these nebulae, however,
one is unprotected, without our usual comforts and as-
surances. The womb of creation is also an abyss.
In the series of this St Ottilien Gospel this is Easter. We are
used to very different images of Easter: the stone that has
been removed from the empty tomb, a radiant and trium-
phant Risen Lord. With this picture Carl Lazzari reminds us
of the space dynamics in the biblical account of the last
days in the earthly life of Jesus. At the beginning there is
the Last Supper in the upper room of a house in Jerusalem,
a rather confined space. The setting then widens: the gar-
den should be a walled place of peace and instead turns
into the location of betrayal. From here the action moves
on to the palace of Pilate where the trial is played out on
a public stage. Society and state are present now. Good
Friday is set on a hill: what will happen here is meant for
everyone. The Fathers of the Church were moved by the
thought that the beams of the cross aimed at every direc-
tion, piercing the world’s length and width, height and
depth. The resurrection takes place during the middle of
the night. This is not only the hour of darkness; it is also
the time when space becomes visible to us. During the
day the atmosphere seals our horizon like a blue bowl. In
the evening it becomes translucent: stars and galaxies ap-
pear as we try to grasp creation. The explosive dynamic of
Easter is brought home when Christ breaks out from his
tomb into the unfathomable expanse of space.
In the foreground of this picture I feel like those dumb
soldiers who are strewn across the resurrection images of
the great Renaissance painters. These soldiers don’t un-
derstand what is going on behind their backs; and how
could they? It is my consolation that the resurrection
involves all, even those who understood very little and
maybe nothing at all.
I do look somewhat longingly to those other pictures
where the scenery is common and even homely: at the
fruit basket which the Three Kings are offering, and at As-
tra, the monastery dog who wags a joyful tail when the
Lord arrives. This Life of Jesus has taken on the flesh of St.
Ottilien, it has become rooted here. But it did not let itself
be reduced to our everyday horizon: it remains an irrup-
tion of the absolute into the life of the world. Even the
unimaginable expanse of creation is small in front of the
event of Golgotha and receives its light from the resurrec-
tion. This is the immodesty of the Christian Faith, and Carl
Lazzari has shown it.
Carl made me look to the right, and me alone. I appear
not overwhelmed by the emptiness of space and the dis-
tance of the nebulae but rather receive and turn back all
that has happened in those 11 previous images. Resurrec-
tion is not a fresh start, all new and breaking with the past.
It is a relecture, completion and transformation of all that
has gone before.
203
Acknowledgements: to Jeremias Schroeder for his invita-
tion to paint these pictures, and also for his Foreword to
this Handbook. Pater Cyrill, Mother Irene Dabalus, Thomas
‘Alf’ Hoch, Kenneth and Annette McConkey, and Sabine
Riedelsberger are accordingly acknowledged elsewhere
in the text. Individual photographers are appropriately
credited - all other photographs are mine. Additionally,
my thanks to: Sabina Alkire who, within some mysterious
Destiny, ignited the flame for this searching pilgrimage;
the diverse individuals who agreed to be portrayed, espe-
cially those living busy lives in other countries; everyone,
especially a youngest-by-poem, who bravely responded
with their own well-written thoughts for this book - thus
creating a truly genuine collaboration in the name of Je-
sus Christ; my immediate if naturally separated adult fam-
ily in England - wife Sheila, sons Christopher and Simon,
and daughter Karen, who, by an immense measure, have
defined who I am, and, though not directly involved, are
nonetheless discretely inferred in one painting; Chris-
tiania Whitehead, in long-standing friendship, for patient-
ly enduring many, too-long, confessorial letters recount-
ing ad infinitum my good days and bad; master carpenter
Brother Rupert and painter/restorer Brother Laurenz for
their making of the twelve golden frames for these paint-
ings; colleague-in-art Meister Karlheinz Kappl for his total
204
enthusiasm and celebratory evening Schnitzels; Brother
Damian for happily permitting my sharing of his Schu-
macher’s Haus, and his neighbourly caring thereafter; Sigi
and her sister Claudia in their cheerful, Latin American-
music-playing coffee shop where, though often it may
not have appeared so, to the sweetly haunting voice of
Mercedes Sosa I did much thoughtful planning, detailed
writing, endless editing, and pitiless revising at that little
corner table which briefly became ‘Carl’s’; designer Son-
ja Schindler for this book’s excellent graphic layout and
production; Brigitte Müller for careful pictorial editing;
indeed to Saint Ottilien’s entire warmly hospitable mo-
nastic, Gymnasium, and lay communities; but finally, and
above all, to American Brother Otto, subject daily to strict
monastic discipline, yet whose judicious encouragement,
skilled administrative organization, precise critical re-
sponses, and generously disposed good humour were in-
valuable. This was especially true during the occasionally
fraught, often wearying, ever demanding final months of
this Italianate-sounding, English painter’s Resurrection...
in a Benedictine monastery... in Bavaria.
Head bowed, I thank you all.
205
CARL LAZZARI, N.D.D., A.R.C.A.
born 1934 in Newcastle upon Tyne, England
An abbreviated professional Curriculum Vitae
Education: Saint Bede’s R.C. Primary School
Saint Cuthbert’s R.C. Grammar School
Sunderland College of Art 1951 - 1955
British Army 1955 - 1957
The Royal College of Art, London 1957 - 1960
Life-long painter and illustrator; writer; ex-concert key-
board musician; occasional performance artist specializ-
ing in the Dada poems of Kurt Schwitters and those of
non-Dada Carl Lazzari; own poetry praised by published
poets; assistant music therapist to severely handicapped
children in a Special School; tutor to equally handicapped
adults at a MacIntyre Care Centre; humanitarian aid-
worker in Bosnia, Croatia, and in post-Chernobyl Belarus;
teacher and lecturer; university head of department; uni-
versity external examiner and faculty senior examiner. In
theatre: producer, director, and performer in several inter-
active audio-visual productions interrelating painting and
music; artistic director and designer to the first perform-
ance of Charlotte Gunnerstad-Graham’s chamber opera
Herr Arne’s Silver Ducats; artistic director to performances
of Henry Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas conducted by
Janie Beacon.
Collaborations: with composers Steve Ingham and
Roger Redgate 1990 - 1995
with Welsh composer Bronwyn Evans -
Five Pieces - performed 1995
with Japanese master painter/calligra-
pher Tetsuo Wada - Tokyo -1999
206
Performances: Kings Hall: with the Armstrong String
Quartet, pianist in Mozart’s Piano
Quartet in G Minor - 1992
Gulbenkian Theatre: as painter on-stage
improvising with English
soprano Nicola Walker-Smith - 1994
Kings Hall: Poems Of Loss - personally-
spoken presentations of my
love poetry to music by Mahler, Ravel,
and Webern - twice in 1995
In 1996 as the first ever artist-in-residence at the Royal
College of Music in London, amongst my other predict-
able activities, I was honoured to be invited to direct and
conduct two experimental workshops in creative musi-
cal composition, by myself decided, from visual sources.
What a privilege to work with a group of the world’s most
talented post-graduate soloists divided, quite naturally,
into percussion, strings, woodwind, brass, and keyboards.
We created extempore a three-movement symphonic
piece derived from my projected photographic slides of
colours, patterns, art, and the micro and macro natural
world! It was a highlight of my professional artist’s life. All
of us, our eyes and ears together tuned, flowing in these
expressive rivers, somehow, striving for the unattainable
Eden... we knew it was there - but could we reach it? Per-
haps we came close.
As a painter, I have twice been funded by the Arts Council
of Great Britain via its regional associations. I have visited
thirty-two countries in fourteen of which I’ve drawn and
worked-for-and-with their children. My paintings, draw-
ings, and prints are in public and private collections in
nineteen countries. Twenty-seven solo exhibitions. Oth-
er pictures exhibited? Too many to list - from The Royal
Academy and The Mall Galleries in London, via The Brit-
ish Council in Hong Kong, to All Saint’s Anglican Church
in the black township of Pampierstad in the Republic of
South Africa.

But surely, between you and me, all that matters is who
we are today. Dusty medals commemorate only the past.
They cannot guarantee a tomorrow which is something
we must decide together. And for myself? If you are now
looking at my pictures or reading my words - I can ask for
no more than that.

207
208