Out of our suffering (Nick Cave / Angela Alaimo O'Donnell)

We suffer as human beings,
but out of that can come enormous joys,
and genuine happiness, too.
 It can run in tandem with this ordinary sense of suffering.
Otherwise, joy doesn’t resonate fully.
 Joy seems to leap forth out of our suffering.

 --Nick Cave

One artist who knew great suffering and yet produced extraordinary work was the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. Although Kahlo ostensibly abandoned her faith, America Magazine writer Angela Alaimo O’Donnell writes of the Catholic inspiration that undergirds Kahlo’s work: 

    The inviolate self Kahlo paints […] is also ecce homo—or ecce femina—the Woman of Sorrows who must endure the crucifixion of being human. 

    The inspiration for her art came from a variety of sources, one of which was the Catholic practice of ex-voto art, votive offerings to the saints or to God. These small paintings depict instances of human disaster—accidents, sudden sickness, death from disease, robbery, assault and murder—overseen by divine providence. Frida and her husband owned over 400 of these ex votos, which line the walls of Casa Azul. Largely the work of Mexican folk artists, each constitutes a kind of prayer. The figures are often depicted appealing for divine intervention to save them from death and suffering. Saints, angels, Christ, and God the Father appear in the sky, creating the image of a world in which the divine is in communication with and actively present in human affairs. 

    [Kahlo’s] Catholic formation is evident in her iconic self-portraits (some of which resemble actual icons), including those in which she wears the traditional Mexican Resplandor headdress, a garment made of starched veils that encircles her face like a halo; in her many visual allusions to the central events of the Christian story and Catholic lore, including the instruments of Christ’s passion and the sufferings of the saints; and in her insistence upon the beauty and sanctity of the body. 

--Angela Alaimo O’Donnell
 

Image source 1: Frida Kahlo, The Broken Column (detail), https://adogcalledpain.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/can-we-learn-from-suffering-lse-forum-for-european-philosophy-24-oct-2016/
Quotation 1 source
Image source 2 and Quotation 2 source (complete article): Frida Kahlo, Diego on My Mind (Self-Portrait as Tehuana), https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2019/04/19/catholic-art-frida-kahlo?utm_source=Newsletters&utm_campaign=1e8ad4d3b3-ARTS_CAMPAIGN_2019_04_20&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0fe8ed70be-1e8ad4d3b3-58623709