Nudity doesn’t scare this Christian artist

By Jenna Smith and ChristianWeek | March 28, 2008

The human body is something of a stumbling block for the Christian community. Besides its obvious link to those infamous "sins of the flesh," much of Christian theology has for centuries attributed far more importance to the soul and the mind than it has to the body, thus creating something of a divide between the spiritual and the material.

There are artists within the Christian milieu, however, who seem untouched by this ambiguity towards the body simply because the body is so important to art.

Maria Gabankova is one such artist. The Czech-born Canadian has recently published a collection of her works in a book, Body Broken-Body Redeemed. With more than 50 paintings Body Broken-Body Redeemed leaves the viewer delighted to have been disturbed.

The book journeys from some early sketches of homeless people on the New York subway through the artist's exploration of the body as not only a creation that has fallen, but also as a "manifestation of our redemption." One has only to look at her piece Waiting for a Miracle, a contemporary scene of a man washing a woman's feet, to understand what John Franklin meant when he wrote in his introduction, "For Maria Gabankova, the spiritual is revealed in the physical."

Some could read her paintings as quite dark. Gabankova herself admits that there have been misunderstandings around her art, "some people get upset-they find the images hard," she says. The sullen, sunken faces and shades of gray in the backgrounds, not to mention the details of bones, flesh and muscles, do indeed provoke reactions.

For Gabankova, however, her art featured in this book is simply an expression of her total awe with the human body.

"I went to Florence to study the anatomical wax models at La Specola museum collection, and was just fascinated by what I saw. We [humans] are all texture, color and shape. Painting the body is a way of studying creation. During my whole life I have always come back to a quote by Leonardo Da Vinci who said, 'painting is a way to learn to know the Maker of all marvelous things.'"

The solemn tones in her work also point to the brokenness of humanity. Her piece The Fall, for instance, demonstrates the "indivisibility of the spiritual and the physical" as stated by Gabankova. The work is a study of nude figures and therefore an exposure of the human body.

But it is also an exposure of the human condition; hence the facial expressions of despair as the bodies plummet downward against decaying background. "Even in my darker works," Gabankova says, "I think it is implied that there is a need to search for God. I like that space in between brokenness and redemption because it shows this search."

The search towards redemption is again woven into Gabankova's portrayal of the body. She has two works, Hand-Grace, part of a series, and Hope, in which hands are central to the peaceful images.

"Hands have always been a running theme in my art. I feel like hands are God's gift to humanity- they are the tools of creativity and also of destruction. I think they are an instrument of our free will."

Her works, while carefully treading the line in between the expressive while avoiding the literal or preachy, are extremely personal. Her parents, to whom the book is dedicated, were objectors to the communist regime in Czechoslovakia and her father was a political prisoner. The stories of her early life ricochet into her art: "My parents were figurative artists and they are a big part of what I do. This book is a connection to who I am."

Body Broken-Body Redeemed is published by Piquant Editions (2007). For more information, visit www.paintinggallery.net.