Mormon Easter
Madeline Rupard (American, b. 1991)
Mormon Easter (2022)
Acrylic on paper, 9 x 12 inches
Used with permission of the artist, madelinerupard.com
Circular folded tables, white tablecloths, and textured walls are materials common to most Latter-day Saint chapels.
But here, Rupard uses them to visualize a scene from the New Testament, where the stone is rolled away from the sepulcher made to reveal Christ’s empty tomb on Easter morning.
Using everyday materials to describe such a spiritually profound moment creates a paradox that Rupard calls the “paradox of divine truth to be found in artificial, prefabricated spaces in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”
The uniformity of Latter-day Saint places of worship may be utilitarian. Still, as Rupard demonstrates, the visual simplicity of these spaces conceals a deeper spiritual complexity and experience that many Latter-day Saints share. Even the most mundane objects can acquire sacred meaning, as Rupard says, “If I really believe that God exists and that He loves us very much, every painting is an Easter painting.”
About the Artist
Born in the Utah desert, Madeline Rupard grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland and Augusta, Georgia. In 2016 she received her BFA in Studio Art from Brigham Young University and in 2019 she received an MFA in Painting from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.
Rupard’s paintings consider the American landscape as one who has moved through it frequently and traveled across long distances. A sense of wonder and solitary, transient observation is instilled in her pictures--you are not here to stay, but always passing through. She paints to describe contradictions: the suburban and the sublime, the sacred and the mundane, and the ancient and man-made running up against each other.
