Mark This!

Illustrated by Anita Breitenberg

Mark This! provides an illustrated version of The Gospel of Mark as seen through an artist eyes, and gives a thumbnail guide through these passages. The book contains eighty-three works contemporize Mark's Gospel through symbolic storytelling, bringing a fresh interpretation to scriptures with this series of images. Ms. Breitenberg has illustrated scripture for four decades. While serving with the UN in Bosnia in the mid-nineties, she developed a concern for individuals from different cultures, and sought to find an artistic style appropriate to convey her spiritual journey to an audience with limited exposure to contemporary Christian images. The form of a mandala, representing the universe, was chosen an appropriate structure for spiritual contemplation for a new audience. As a result, the works give an appearance of dream interpretations while stylistically incorporating kaleidoscopes and stained glass windows, respectively representing change and holiness. They are a composite of images old and new, broken and whole, destroyed and restored, and replace diminished and distained with delighted and desired. Ms. Brietenberg's works have been exhibited in Europe and throughout the United States, including Museum of Biblical Art in Manhattan, Yale University and Washington National Cathedral. They are also included in the permanent collections of Museum of Biblical Art in Dallas, Texas, Catholic University and Convergence Church in Alexandria, Virginia. Her art was reviewed in the New York Times and appeared on Commonweal Magazines cover. Ms. Brietenberg seeks to broaden the appeal of contemporary Christian art to a wider and diversified audience and present it in a radical and provoking manner. She lives in Northern Virginia, as do her two children and three grandchildren.