During the summer of 1956, Ashley Bryan painted a fresco the curved center of the East walls of the South Solon Meeting House (Bryan had been selected by a New York jury for the Margaret Blake Fellowship; Cummings 49). Bryan’s fresco has a rich and vibrant color scheme that complements Sidney Hurwitz’s frescoes that flank it: earthy tones of the land on the left and blue water on the right. In a lush landscape with palm trees, we see a crowd gathered on a seashore listening to the preaching of Jesus, who stands on a boat. The figures in the crowd occupy the left side of the composition and are represented in a variety of positions: standing, sitting, crouching, laying down, climbing trees, and bending towards the lake. The crowd is also very diverse in terms of age and ethnicity. There are animals, such as donkeys and a dog.
On the right side of the composition, Jesus stands on a boat, along with a figure sitting and three others holding paddles in their hands. Jesus is represented as a Black man, dressed in white clothes and illuminated by bright lights that stream down on him. His body is turned towards the shore and he gestures with his hands as he addresses the crowd. Although the Parable of the Sower appears in all three synoptic gospels (Matt. 13:1–23, Mark 4:1–20, and Luke 8:1–15 ), Mildred Cummings (49) reports that Bryan took his inspiration Mark 4:1-3: “And he began again to teach by the sea side: and there was gathered unto him a great multitude, so that he entered into a ship, and sat in the sea; and the whole multitude was by the sea on the land. And he taught them many things by parables, and said unto them in his doctrine, Hearken; Behold, there went out a sower to sow: And it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the way side, and the fowls of the air came and devoured it up.” The sower in Jesus’ parable appears close to the upper center of the fresco, as a figure in the background, distant from the crowd, shown scattering seeds into the soil.
Bryan’s palette is very colorful, and his style of painting is distinctly gestural. Bold visible brushstrokes endow the fresco with a painterly and dynamic feel—perhaps even musical. The artist recounts that in the summer of 1950 he was allowed to sketch during the rehearsals for the concert Spanish cellist Pablo Casals gave in honor of the 200th anniversary of Bach’s passing. The experience greatly impacted him and he declared: “I found the rhythm of my hand” (Hond). Indeed, we can discern in his fresco his hand’s rhythm, with his brushstrokes conveying motion. Revealingly, Bryan signed his fresco on the lower right corner with the same Latin phrase that Bach used to sign his compositions: “Soli Deo Gloria” (“Glory to God Alone”), further denoting the influence of music in his work (Clark).
In his representation of the faces of the figures, Bryan was inspired by African masks (Clark). His entire life, he was dedicated to introducing the cultural contributions of Black artists and art to people, as we can witness in his choice of poems by Langston Hughes in his storytelling and recitations in children’s classes (Little, “Ashley Bryan Reminds Us”). The fact that he derived inspiration from African masks for his South Solon work, further demonstrates his appreciation for African art. Moreover, his representation of Jesus as a Black man also challenges conventional representations. In that way, Bryan transgresses cultural and hegemonic ideas of Christianity, highlighting the centrality of Christ’s teachings about love, indiscriminately directed to humanity.
Ashley Bryan produced countless drawings to work out complex compositions such as his South Solon Meeting House fresco. To Ashley, the creative act “never ends, in one form or another” and he always brought his drawing pad around (Little, “Ashley Bryan”). At the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the fresco project in the South Solon Meeting House, Ashley Bryan mentioned that the scenes of the shores and the sea of Galilee in the fresco were inspired by his visit to his parent’s home island of Antigua. There he drew fishermen by the seaside, marketplaces, children at play, animals, and trees on the island (Cummings 50). His choice to include figures and surroundings inspired by the island, and faces resembling the African masks contribute to the fresco’s personal dimension.
In earlier representations of the subject, such as a woodcut attributed to Albrecht Dürer, a medium that Ashley Bryan particularly liked, the focus solely on the sower (notice that as in the parable, we see the birds eating the seeds). The topic recurs in a secular version in the famous painting by Jean-François Millet’s The Sower, reminding us of the rich visual vocabulary Bryan possessed (Clark).
In a painting by Pieter Bruegel, on the other hand, the focus is on the expansive landscape, although we see in the distance the crowd that has gathered on the shore. Ashley Bryan’s choice to depict the biblical subject with a focus on a diverse crowd coming together to listen to Jesus’ preaching can be connected to his belief in the uniting power of beauty and art. The scene that he painted so carefully after many preparatory studies, represents a utopia of sorts. It is a scene depicting peace and unity with nature, where individuals come together around Jesus and participate in a harmonious composition of colors and movement.
—Zehra Gundogdu
- Clark, Nichols. “Ashley Bryan and the South Solon Meeting House Frescoes.” Acadia Senior College. 9 June 2022.
- Cummings, Mildred H. South Solon: The Story of a Meeting House. South Solon, Maine: South Solon Historical Society, 1959.
- Hond, Paul. “The Whimsical Spirit and Positive Wisdom of Artist Ashley Bryan” Columbia Magazine Fall 2021.
- King James Bible Online.
- Little, Carl. “Ashley Bryan.” Art New England. July/August 2022.
- ———. “Ashley Bryan Reminds Us: ‘Beautiful Are the Souls of My People.’” The Island Institute. 26 October 2015.