the last supper


uring the feast of the Passover, Jesus reveals his upcoming betrayal and death and then entreats his disciples to make a remembrance in his honor by drinking wine and eating bread together. For centuries, this “last supper” has been ritualized as the Eucharist, a sacrament and central act of worship in many Christian churches, in which bread and wine are consecrated and consumed in remembrance of Jesus’s death.

Now, there is an element of morbidity to the rite of communion, to the observance of the crucifixion, which relegates a beautiful teaching of love into a death cult ritual, drinking blood and eating of the body. Of course, to honor anyone who has given his or her life for our sake is appropriate.

Rather than remembering the Last Supper as a prelude to death and sacrifice, I choose to depict a remembrance of life, for those who dare to risk injury and death simply for expressing who they are, just as Jesus did.

Employing various scenarios in my Last Supper drawing, I celebrate our communion with life’s experiences of frivolity, drama, tenderness, indulgence, flirtation, joy, intimacy, wonder and pleasure. Rather than show a traditional religious narrative, I embrace both secular and spiritual pursuits of life to say, yes, all of life’s experiences are sacraments, whether we consciously know it or not.