Richard Bavin - The Empty Tomb

Luke 24 1-3

The painting places the viewer at eye level within the tomb, moments after Jesus has walked out into the garden in the warm light of the early morning. The grave-clothes lie in a discarded heap. In preparation for painting this work, Bavin read through the Gospel accounts of Holy Week several times as a prayerful meditation and found himself dwelling on the stillness and emptiness within the tomb moments after Jesus’ departure. ‘The absence was paramount: could I paint this space in a way that conveyed something of the magnitude of what had just taken place?’ The watercolours have been built up in many layers, working in the traditional way of starting with light colours and progressing to darker ones. 

Commentary based on A Guide to the Methodist Art Collection.

Born: Columbus, Ohio, USA, 1957

Education

Richard Bavin worked in London for many years as an IT project manager.  He and his wife spent the late 1990s in an ecumenical community in New Zealand, helping to run a retreat centre.  His experience there led him to train as an artist on his return to the UK, at Hereford College of Arts (2000-02) and Cheltenham School of Art/University of Gloucester (2002-08).

Life and career

Based in Hereford, Bavin has worked as a professional artist for 22 years and is best known as a watercolour landscape painter. He delights in exploring light, weather and atmosphere.  He is a member of The Arborealists, a national group of artists whose work focuses on the depiction of trees.  He regularly exhibits with this group and has worked with them on site specific installations including in Exmoor and Dartmoor National Parks.  He is also artist-in-residence with Herefordshire Wildlife Trust and a member of The PLACE Collective, a community of artists engaged with environmental issues and rural landscapes inspired by a recognition of the critical need for more sustainable ways of living. He is a keen supporter of the Woodland Trust.

Richard Bavin is a practising Christian and he sees his time spent with nature as a form of contemplation. His watercolour, The Empty Tomb, was originally included in the Risen! Art of the Crucifixion and Eastertide exhibition at Monnow Vallery Arts, Hereford and then at the Piano Nobile Gallery, London in 2013.  He has said of his work that he wants to “make paintings which connect with other people and perhaps enable them to see afresh.”

Group exhibitions include Risen! Art of the Crucifixion and Eastertide, Monmow Valley Arts, Hereford and Piano Nobile, London (2013); The Arborealists National Memorial Arboretum, (2020); Tree of Life, Stanton Guildhouse, Broadway (2022); Trees and the Sacred: Arborealists and Friends, Norwich Cathedral (2022); and Into and Out of the Woods, Herefordshire Art Week (2023).

Bavin’s religious works include Drawing the Light, a residency for St Weonard’s Benefice, Herefordshire in Lent 2010; and Stations of the Cross for St Michael’s Discoed (near Presteigne) in Lent 2012.

Artist’s website: www.richardbavin.com/section455212.html (viewed 18 September 2024)

The Arborealists’ website: www.arborealists.com/richard-bavin (viewed 18 September 2024)

The PLACE Collective website: https://theplacecollective.org/ (viewed 18 September 2024)

Seeing the Spiritual: A Guide to the Methodist Modern Art Collection, (Oxford, Methodist Modern Art Collection, 2018), p. 20-21