Stephen Reed
These are the crowds in Israel.
Two thousand years ago the crowds followed Jesus. Today, there are still crowds. They’ve come from the east and west to walk these roads. They’ve come to see the city of Jerusalem. To see Bethlehem. The Jordan River. Galilee. Nazareth. Gethsemane. The wilderness.
In these prints I’m exploring the idea of awareness, the individual being aware of the weight of history that has taken place around them. Through my work I’m looking to draw the viewer into the crowd, to draw them in through the use of fine detail. And I’m looking to contrast this with the use of empty space and empty figures.
How do we respond to history? How do we engage with the past?
Why did the crowds follow Jesus?
"To Follow" is a series of drypoint etchings created in 2016 when I was completing my Degree in Visual Arts. The series explored the crowds in and around Jerusalem, etchings drawn from photographs I took when my family and I visited Israel in 2014.