Soulbody- In Celtic Christianity the soul lovingly encloses the material body. An apparent opposition to the Mediterannean Christian-Gnostic-Manichean-Dualist influenced idea of the soul enclosed by the unspiritual flesh. awaiting its chance to escape to the possible joys of the hereafter
Phoenix- Egyptian Mythology- A long lived birdlike creature that, being consumed in fire, arises from the ashes, renewed and purified.
This is Bernard McCaffrey's first major solo exhibit since a house fire vaporized 85% of his 25 years of prints and negative in Dec. 2003. Thanks to the tremendous support and donations of time, money and materials from the Ottawa Valley community, within a year he and his wife were able to move into a newly built, warm dry, solar powered bio-mass heated space. Ten months later, with the interior still only 1/3 finished, he had a darkroom up and running on mostly donated equipment. From galleries and websites, collectors and friends, he has slowly built up his body of previous work and added to it with new visions.
Early on his art training introduced him to the beauty of the human form in its natural state. Later the writings and visual work of Eric Gill, the English-Welsh Catholic artist, gave him a start on a theology of the body and more recently the beautiful insights of Celtic Christianity have deepened his understanding.
To work visually, especially with a camera, on the subject of the unclothed figure in a mechanistic, puritanical, life destroying society (and the huge amounts of pornography such a society must produce) that comprises much of North America is a small revolutionary act. To relate the work to the Christian
message that Creator-God sacrilized the human bodyu by inhabiting it, is to participate in a greater 2000 year old revolution that is still not wholly understood. These studies of the body- in nature, in myth, in mediation, in studio- are the artist-photographer's attempt to further that understanding.
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