Last spring, when Gwyneth Leech was preparing for the Stations of the Cross she had been commissioned to paint for St. Paul's on the Green, her mind was on the rising insurgency in Iraq and the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal.

Indeed, the paintings reference actions that the United States has been recently criticized for. The first station shows Jesus' judgment before Pontius Pilate. While Pilate is clothed in a traditional Middle Eastern robe, Jesus is depicted in an orange prisoner jumpsuit standing between two soldiers in fatigues, an image reminiscent of prisoners at Guantanamo. An angry mob stands before a tangle of barbed wire, a symbol in many of the other paintings that evokes the image of the crown of thorns.