Father Jerome Tupa OSB has spent half a century documenting his pilgrimages through oil paint. The Pilgrim Age gathers this lifework into a single volume — from the Latin Quarter of Paris to the hills of the Holy Land, the Camino de Santiago, and the sun-bleached coasts of California.
For five decades, Father Jerome Tupa OSB has carried paint and canvas on pilgrimage across Europe, the Middle East, and the American West. His paintings are not landscapes in the traditional sense — they are acts of witness, bold records of the sacred made visible through color and form.
The Pilgrim Age brings together works from his most celebrated series: Road to Rome, presented at the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center in Washington, D.C.; Painting the Pilgrimage, shown at the Getty Center in Los Angeles; Sentinels of Fire, which launched his national reputation at the Minnesota Museum of American Art; and many others spanning his debut exhibitions in Paris to his most recent studio work at Saint John's University.
The volume includes artist’s reflections, exhibition histories, and previously unpublished works. It is the definitive record of one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary American religious painting.
“Fifty years of bold, vibrant oil paintings — a Benedictine monk painting the world as an act of prayer.”