"Another Prodigal Son" by Camilla Connolly

  Artist Statement                   

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The collagraph “Another Prodigal Son” is based around my painting of the same title which won 2nd place in the FEHVA Peoples Choice Award in 2005.  The “prodigal son” story was central to Rembrandt’s work and then of course Arthur Boyd, early in his career as an emerging artist, used the Rembrandt painting as the basis for his own personalised version. In Boyd’s case, he virtually replicated the Rembrandt composition.

The theme is dear to my heart. It is a biblical story, which always appeals to my intensely Irish Catholic roots. My own journey as a human being and artist in fact parallels the prodigal son allegory. The child who sets off into the wider world and basically mucks it all up with reckless living and low life antics, criminality, drugs.

I have played around with the closed security that is the central feature of the Rembrandt and Boyd versions. In these depictions there is a very intense and compassionate embrace between the lost son and his father. In those renditions, the prodigal son kneels at his father’s feet and is lovingly embraced and forgiven for his antics and wayward life.

 My depiction in the collagraph focuses on the moment prior to that embrace that is seen in the Rembrandt and Boyd works. I wanted a sense of unsureness to pervade the image. The prodigal son is still in the wasteland wetland, having trudged across the landscape to make his journey home. He is stepping out of his own private Hell. But there is no family to greet him, no hugs, no slaughtered animal and feasting celebration. There is no compassionate embrace. There is nothing but the viewer of the collagraph, and the prodigal son doesn’t even make contact with him or her.

I wanted to subvert the notion of happy endings in this collagraph and bring the “prodigal son” story out of the realm of allegory and into the gritty reality of complex human relationships. My experience has been just that, as a human being and painter. After living a life of methadone and prostitution and crime on and off for years, it wasn’t a case of walking back into the open arms of others, it hasn’t been a case of idealised delights and everything being warm and fuzzy, and I wanted to communicate that through the prodigal son allegory. It is much more complex than that. We still don’t know if the Prodigal Son in my image has found any healing in his relationship with his father. We still don’t know if there has been any mutually forgiving embrace.