This is My Body Broken, Audrey Lundquist Paesel (1931-2022)

Oil and collage on canvas

Audrey Lundquist Paesel painted “This is my Body Broken” in the late 1970s in Kaiserslautern, Germany. The piece was done in oil, and employs several of her trademarks: patterns, repeated images of the face in different positions (capturing mood and movement), and collage.

It is one of several of pieces that reexamines religious iconography. Paesel was heavily influenced by stained glass windows and imagery from the great cathedrals of Europe, where she lived for over thirty years. While the separate canvases are most often displayed in a jagged cross, they can be hung in any configuration. At one point, they were displayed in a straight row.

Paesel was almost entirely a figurative painter at the time she painted this crucifix (moving on to still lives and landscapes later). By breaking up Christ’s body, she compels the viewer to consider the actual body of Christ – one just like our own.

He has hands and feet and a head. He was, in her mind, a human being with parts that could, in fact, be broken. The head in various positions (essentially moving), reminds us that he was “alive” on the cross – which invites us to consider his frailty and his pain.

Paesel was raised in the Dutch Reformed Church, but developed a liberal view of religion later. As an adult, she was very suspicious of religious dogma of any kind, and this particular piece reflects that. It seems to say, “This was a man, first and foremost.” And by extension: “We are all human, be kind to each other; our bodies, and our spirits, are fragile.” It is a deeply humanist message.

– Kristin Paesel, 2025

“This is My Body Broken” is in St Dunstan’s Episcopal Church, 6205 University Ave in Madison, at the junction with Allen Boulevard.  It was given to the church by Peter and Mariana Hewson.