Altar Piece for St. Benedict's church in Halifax by Renee Forrestall

                   Renee Forrestall's altar piece at St. Ben's church in Halifax.

            

My sister Renee took on a major commission in early 2010, to do the altar piece for a new church in Clayton Park, Halifax, Nova Scotia. She has done several icon, and smaller church altar pieces in the past, but this project was her most ambitious to date. She took this on, as a collaborative project with her husband, Nick Webb who is a professor at the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design. Nick designed the piece, and constructed the frames then installed the piece. As Renee said, "He did all of the work, and got none of the glory." Renee chose Parousia as the theme of the multi-paneled piece, "Communion of the living and the dead." Parousia is a Greek word meaning "coming or arrival" and is often used in the New Testament to indicate the second coming of the Son of Man. In her work Renee created a six-panel work showing a communion of people both living and dead, welcoming the Son of Man. 

 Renee conceived the drawing, and did that as well as the painting. In her piece, she included many, many members of the family and friends as models for the figures. Our dear mother, Natalie LeBlanc Forrestall is in there, with her favorite pet rabbit (left) dressed in a Franciscan robe. A friend of her daughter's, Miranda is there, in a baseball hat. Her nephew Max is there. The pope, Mother Theresa and others.

"Miranda posing (below)- I drew it all in palm ashes, and charcoal I made from the Palm Sunday Palm Stalks sent from Israel. Then I sealed it in, then covered it with different iron oxide powders, erased & rubbed  with bread, sealed them in, then used pigment from all over the world - including Blues from Afghanistan," said Renee. It was done on Baltic Russian-ply. 

Renee sent me some images of the altar piece in progress, from the drawing with charcoal to the painting in, to standing the enormous panels outside in her backyard on a sunny day to see them all together. 

        Drawing that includes our mother's favorite saint, Mother Theresa.

                                               Detail of same drawing. 

  One of the right panels, Renee painted our mother in on the far left in a Franciscan robe, holding her pet rabbit. 

                                        Renee's altar piece set up in her backyard in Halifax. 
Even before this piece was finished she was commissioned to do a second piece, an Icon for the same church. 

--Monica Forrestall