Fragments of Light

Monthly Archives: April 2017

Easter Outpouring

Donald Jackson’s illuminations for the twenty-fourth chapter of Luke’s Gospel burst off the manuscript page with tangible energy. The brilliant gold of Christ’s cross explodes out of the darkness: this is the Cross Triumphant.

Jackson_Crucifixion

. . . suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen!” —Luke 24:4

WordMadeFlesh

. . . in my own design work I’ll do something very structured and then I’ll just take the paint and I’ll go — whack! straight on to it — and splash every where — so you get that, ‘what’s going to happen?’ — you get that, absolute instant excitement against a really carefully articulated, beautifully crafted something else. That is a risk — and a lot of life — that’s the moment that I’m looking for. —Donald Jackson

RaisingOfLazarus

 

Artist Bio
Donald Jackson (b. 1938) is a British calligrapher and official scribe and calligrapher to the Crown Office of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Jackson was Artistic Director of The Saint John’s Bible, a hand-written and illuminated Bible commissioned by the Benedictine monastery of Saint John’s Abbey, Collegeville, Minnesota.