Picture in Focus: Acts of Mercy by Carl Dixon

February 20, 2022

Picture in Focus: Acts of Mercy by Carl Dixon

In this week's featured carved wood panel painting from Carl Dixon, the Mississippi Folk Artist offers illustrations of the six acts of mercy that touch the heart of God and merit eternal life in the Last Judgment narrative found in Matthew 25:31-46. As Christ returns in glory with a retinue of angels to usher in the end of time, his followers perform the good deeds listed in the biblical story, not knowing that in helping others they are helping Christ. On the left, they offer a place for the homeless to sleep in a missionary shelter, while others below hand out loaves of bread to the hungry. In the center, a tall man distributes items of recycled clothing to the needy and visitors offer comfort to a man in a hospital bed. On the right, Dixon shows the Good Samaritan offering a drink to the stranger left for dead on the Jericho Road, and in the final visual vignette, we see Martin Luther King Jr. behind bars drafting his famous "Letter from the Birmingham Jail," where he writes that "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." (John Kohan)