And Peter Wept

"Then he began to curse, and he swore an oath, 'I do not know the man!' At that moment the cock crowed. Then Peter remembered what Jesus had said:'Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times. 'And he went out and wept bitterly." Matt. 26:74

The deft use of a paintbrush reveals a few swift, rhythmical lines that configure a large rooster dwarfing three little words, three little words that echo Peter's denial three times. With an economy of pigment, the artist limits the color palette. And as such, models an image of unadorned, monumental denial. With its sheer size, 60×40, the artist has a point to make: a reminder in a simple fashion, the grave mistake Peter made on the morning of Jesus' arrest.

Subject material for high art typically does not include farm animals. Except for nativity scenes, they are usually reserved as the visual vocabulary for children's books or comic books. Bestiaries in British monasteries in the middle ages used them as moral lessons in which animals served as metaphors for human characteristics to teach or encourage monks in moments of temptation and weakness. Peter's moment of weakness becomes forever associated with the rooster as emblematic of denial.

Peter, the one always in the forefront of the foray with Jesus' disciples, and the first to say he would resolutely defend his Lord earlier in the chapter, realizes in black and white the cost of following his Lord. When push came to shove, Peter finds himself in the courtyard of the high priest giving the wrong answer to a questioning slave girl. Peter, the rock, crumples in front of a second-class citizen.

The rooster fills every square inch in the massive format. The metaphor of denial hauntingly shows that all Peter's achingly good intentions reduced him to a person whose sins loom over him wherever he goes. There's no place to turn, but hide under the weight of his humiliation. And Peter wept.

[By adding the phrase "and Peter wept," the rooster becomes a specific rooster at a specific time and place in history. The viewer is transported there. He might also be confronted by the same dilemma as Peter's---for I have the desire to do good, but I cannot carry it out (Romans 7:18)]