IX. Jesus Falls the Third Time
John Cobb

The scenario of the painting of the falling of Jesus began with an Austin American-Statesman news clip of a fairly recent uprising in Venezuela. A man was being chased by soldiers through the narrow streets of a small town, and he lost his footing and fell. I thought that one day I might have use for the scene. When approached about painting one of these stations, I used this initial composition. I constructed a wooden cross of realistic dimensions and superimposed it upon the back of the falling man. In the painting of the shoes, which were broken old tennis shoes, I realized that to bring the painting to a contemporary view of the subject would require special handling. A costume with thorns and a scarlet military cloak would date the work, and I wanted it to be a living, contemporary representation of the concept of perfection and falling. I used the naked feet of Alvenia, a woman who comes on Thursdays to help my Mom. She complied, and as her feet are dark, I lightened them to match the skin of the figure. Doing that left me in a quandary about the use of race, whether the figure should be Jewish or not, and why I was nullifying this question of race in the painting. So I set about to introduce this concept into the picture. Rather than using soldiers as figures of misguided authority, I used two Mississippi Ferry Authorities confronting a group of Black women and preventing the women's sympathetic approach. In addition are the two Marys and John. Mary the mother of Jesus is Sandra Lopez, a devout Catholic widow, and the other Mary my Anglo Protestant aunt Margaret. John was reduced to a mere shadow behind the tree. The man trying to steady the falling beam of the cross is Reuben, affectionately known as "Coach." I introduced to the confusing scene, offset by the steady horizontal of the cross, a foreground figure. This was initially to be Judas, but of course, he was already dead. So the figure became a revolutionary contemplating the consequence of calling oneself such. And in all this, as if it were not enough, something yet was required, and that became the figure of Brother Dunn. It is not enough to merely portray a historical event. The Biblical image had to be brought to life, and how better than with the devoted life of Dunn as a present-day follower. He is seen here identifying with Jesus, his right hand melding into the foot of his fallen Lord. With his left is set up the question: How do we feel when the thing we know is dashed? On the shallow end our concepts of perfection are shaken, and on the deeper side, what authority or divisive racial turmoil can prevent us from entering into the strange realm whereby we experience the suffering of others - and know that His suffering was the purest and most revered of all.