The Ultimate Voyage
by Carla Parris
Title
The Ultimate Voyage
Artist
Carla Parris
Medium
Photograph - Digital Photograph
Description
It has been many years since I read C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, but there are two scenes from the series which gripped me when I first read them, and which have stayed with me to this day.
The first, from The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, was when one of the characters (Lucy, the youngest daughter) encountered the immense, awe-inspiring, altogether wonderful lion Aslan, the allegorical Christ figure, and He invited her to do the thing she most wanted to do, but would have been terrified to even express, and certainly to do without His invitation - to actually approach Him and, blissfully and intensely intimately, bury her face in His thick, lush mane. To me, this captured something of the loving heart of Jesus who invites us to "Come unto Me."
The second was a scene from the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, when the voyagers were seeking Aslan and His kingdom at the end of the world. The descriptive language at the end of the novel was so, so beautiful, and I remember the unexpected twist when two of the voyagers encountered, unexpectedly, at the end of the earth, beyond a crystal clear sea of glass, not a Lion, but a Lamb appearing as if having been slain. This is, of course, an allegorical depiction of Jesus who is not only the Lion of Judah, but the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
The inspiration for this image was earlier episodes in the latter novel, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, when the Narnian ship embarked upon the high seas and its voyagers experienced a series of grand adventures before the ultimate encounter, described above, with the Lamb, who subsequently transformed into Aslan and spoke to the voyagers. Even when He was not directly part of the recounted events, Aslan loomed large in the novel, as He does in this picture. The travellers' voyage was always under His watchful eye, and He was their ultimate goal. That was the concept for this digital image which I created as part of an artistic challenge to create an image depicting something from, or inspired by, a favorite book .
This composite image incorporates one of my photographs of a spectacular sunset on the Florida Gulf coast.
Uploaded
November 16th, 2016
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Comments (21)
John M Bailey
Congratulations on your feature in the Fine Art America Group "Images That Excite You!"
Darice Machel McGuire
Beautiful creation. I enjoyed reading about your inspiration behind the image.