Imagination

Our Best Life Possible

art, at risk kids, Children, Creativity, Faith, Family, Forgiveness, Great American Eclipse, home, Imagination, Love, nature, Painting, purpose, Retirement, Spirituality, Strength, Travel, Uncategorized

When I was young, I thought I had to be Wonder Woman in order to please my parents. You know, the perfect daughter, the smartest child, the best artist, and the best behaved of all their progeny. After all, I was the first born and the only girl, so I’d had my parents’ undivided attention for those crucial early years. I thought if I worked hard, I could overcome any obstacle, and make any situation better, just by my force of will.

This is magical thinking, however. It works for comic book heroes who live in hard edge black and white moral worlds, but we live in the real world of fuzzy grays and complex moral choices. My family history of long marriages wasn’t going to extend to my generation, for I could no longer live with my alcoholic husband. I felt less like Wonder Woman and more like a failure. I told my mother I thought she and daddy always wanted me to be “perfect to earn their love.”

She looked dumbfounded at me, paused a moment and spoke, “Honey, we only wanted you to do your very best at all times. We knew you had more in you that you hadn’t tapped yet!”

This is the moment I forgave my parents for my Wonder Woman complex and learned to live with her. Not every person has had my parents. Some parents have no dreams for their children, so we must dream for them and encourage them to be superheroes in our classrooms, in our neighborhoods and wherever we meet them.

Other parents lack imagination. They see their children repeating their own lives as good enough. Yet, they too only want the best for their children so if they can only imagine their life repeated for them, we shouldn’t fault these parents for their lack of imagination. They never lived in our age or times, nor in our bodies or minds! We children can become the best we can be, for our world is far grander than theirs ever was! We won’t always live up to the expectations of our parents or the plans they imagined for us, but we will be superheroes anyway.

My daddy once told me I was learning in high school chemistry what he studied in college chemistry classes. This is why your six year old nephew or niece can work your smart phone faster than you can! The world’s knowledge explodes now, doubling every year, but with the internet it will soon double every 12 HOURS!

We won’t need to learn all this information, or keep it stored in our minds, but we will need to know how to access it. Asking the best questions, knowing what is necessary, and the sense of discernment to winnow the good from the chaff will be what separates the best answers from the better, the good, and the ordinary ones.

My latest painting is a self portrait as “Wonder Woman during the Great American Eclipse.” I traveled to Kentucky to see this wonderful event at Land Between the Lakes. We can all be superheroes at every age and in every body shape. Just as the eclipse united all of America in the joy of celebrating a coast to coast mass experience provided by nature, we each have a divine image within us that unifies all of humanity as one, for we’re each made in the image of God. As the Jewish queen in scripture was reminded, “Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.” (Esther 4:14)

How we become the best persons is a matter of becoming a superhero or “coming to royal dignity for such a time as this!” We’ll always be fine tuning our spiritual lives, our education, and our professional achievements. Even when we retire, we’ll find engaging opportunities for service to others and self improvement both. Most likely our spiritual lives will deepen and our family and friendships will take on more importance. I hope you all seek your best life possible, beginning today.

Join me in being a Superhero! You can be a hero for someone who needs you today.

Joy and Peace, Cornelia

Weaving Images

art, Creativity, Healing, Icons, Imagination, incarnation, Painting, renewal, Spirituality, vision

“Aye, workman, make me a dream”

By Stephen Crane

Aye, workman, make me a dream,

A dream for my love.

Cunningly weave sunlight,

Breezes, and flowers.

Let it be of the cloth of meadows.

And—good workman—

And let there be a man walking thereon.

In 2013, I made a painting of flowers in a meadow. It wasn’t a bad painting, but it never called anyone’s name. Yes, it was part of my unsold inventory, as we artists call our orphan works, those which have yet to find another home. 

“What the heck! I’m cutting this up, weaving it into another form, and I’ll see if it speaks in a different voice to me.” This is artist speak for “I’ve had it with my life, my world, my existence, and my progress at the easel.” In truth, my hand has felt dead due to illness: my blood pressure was too low, so I lacked energy. It’s hard to paint without energy. Depression also robbed me of my creativity, since I lacked the will to pursue a challenge. Thankfully my doctors are healers and I’m on the right track now. I just had to find the key to unlock the door to the path ahead. 

I cut the old canvas up into mostly even strips and wove it in a simple basket weave. Once I rewove this 8″ x 10″ canvas, I sat meditating upon the colors and shapes. I began to see faces of Christ appearing and arms and bodies, as if he were hanging upon the cross, one image superimposed upon another. The checkerboard colors were a garden of flowers wildly blooming in a riotous exuberance of the joy that was set before him, even though he was enduring the shame of the cross (Hebrews 12:2). I took some cerulean blue and pyrrole red to make a dark violet to sketch in the outer shapes of the figures. These colors make up the ground, along with some white for highlights. I used Payne’s grey to darken other parts of the ground. The halos are cadmium yellow deep. 

Why are the faces of Christ not detailed? We often want to fixate on who the person of Jesus is physically, but this ties him to his human body only. We forget he is also the Son of God, a being who can’t be imagined or represented except in the form of Jesus, the incarnate one (the embodied one). Cultures across the world represent Christ as one of their own people as a result, rather than tie him to a first century middle eastern individual. 

Then too, if Christ takes the sins of all the world upon himself on the cross, one could say he also takes the pain of all the people of the world into himself. If this is so, we would no longer see the “face of Christ,” but we would see the “face of every person for whom Christ’s suffering was redemptive.” This is a mystical understanding, of course, but it gets to the heart of the meaning of ATONEMENT. This has always meant sacrifice in the past, but today some of us are understanding it to be AT ONE MENT. This is when we and Christ are at one in suffering and redemption, in death and in the hope of new life, and when the “cloth of meadows” is indeed where we walk in new ways. 
Joy and peace for the Easter season. Cornelia 

Triple Christ icon, $50, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 8″ x 10″ 

Autumn Study

art, Creativity, Faith, grief, Healing, Imagination, Mental Illness, nature, Painting, renewal, trees, Uncategorized

My newest painting is full of energy and colors, for it’s a study of autumn leaves and tree branches, which I saw in the forest surrounding my home. Nature doesn’t plan out how the pine needles fall from the trees, nor how the ornamental pear tree leaves blow up the hill into the shade. Tree branches fall down when they come to the end of their usefulness on the tree. The oaks and sycamores might not be as bright in color, but they too will add their bodies to make the soil richer for the surrounding trees.

This painting is more about my joy of having a brush in my hand and paint on the canvas than it is about any attempt at any realism or representation of my original photo. Layering the colors; changing the background blues; marching the pine straw lines; and even losing the big, bottom sycamore leaf (it became amorphous, overlapping leaf shapes) was a sunny morning’s delight.

It’s been a long time, for I haven’t felt good enough to do anything creative in my studio. What happens to the artist who can no longer feel? Sickness can dull the senses, so the hand can no longer feel the touch of the brush against the canvas or the weight of the paint on the brush. These are minuscule amounts, for sure! One needs to be well to tell the difference and know when to keep going or let go of the stroke. Also one can overwork an area or the whole painting. I have several of these disasters which I’ve decided not to share with you all. (Although I admit I might be my own worst critic. However I do have loads of experience and high expectations!)

Depression, a form of sickness, is worse than feeling sad for a few days. It is a loss of interest in the experiences which once gave you joy, and it’s isolation from the living world because you feel dead inside. When I lost my daughter, I began to crawl in a hole. Then I got physically sick, and my blood pressure medication was working too well. I was one of the walking dead. Once my doctors got the physical problems cleared up, I realized I was also depressed. Now my new “brain chemistry ” is making me feel like “my old self!” I’m thankful I’m able to do creative work again.

A verse which has steadied me through this difficult journey from Isaiah 57:18-19–

I have seen their ways, but I will heal them;

I will lead them and repay them with comfort,

creating for their mourners the fruit of the lips.

Peace, peace, to the far and the near, says the Lord;

and I will heal them.

Autumn Study, 12″ x 16″, acrylic on canvas, $100.

CREATION: from order or chaos?

art, Creativity, Faith, Healing, Holy Spirit, Icons, Imagination, nature, Painting, Reflection, renewal, Spirituality, vision

How do you do your best work? Do you need a certain amount of order, do you like to fly by the seat of your pants and put out the fires which spring up, or do you need all the decks to be stick and span before you get started? I belong to the goldilocks crowd: I need just enough order and disorder both to work. 

“In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.” (Genesis 1:1-3)

Originally creation in the Bible began with formlessness and emptiness, while darkness covered the face of the deep waters. The land was buried under this great deep. The Spirit or breath of God was blowing over all things. Only at God’s word did light separate from the darkness. 

In the studio, ideas comes up from the depths of the mind. They are hidden in that darkness, like light was first hidden in the blackness covering the face of the deep. Once we begin to work on the idea in the studio, we discover if it’s a sun, moon, or a star. It might begin as one image, but become something else entirely as we work. For instance, this painting above began as a hardedged design, more like a poster. 

First stage: Recreation Icon


This is because a painting has its own voice, just as a child does. And an artist responds to the give and take of the images he or she lays down, eventually getting to a stopping point. The painting is either overdone or the artist has learned all that’s possible from this one creative endeavor. Time to go on to the next one.  

The good news is always contained in the verse of this painting:  Psalms 104:30–

“When you send forth your spirit, they are created; and you renew the face of the ground.”

God is always sending his renewing Spirit to those who are his children, who are his own creation. Together, we will renew the face of the earth, with the help of the Spirit who first created it. 

Icon of the Hands Recreating the World: acrylic on canvas, 16″ x 20″, $100, 2017. 

Rule of Life

art, Creativity, generosity, Habits, Health, Imagination, New Year, Painting, Philosophy, purpose, purpose, Retirement, Strength, United Methodist Church, vision, vision

First painting of the New Year: 
Sometimes you have to remember who you are and whose you are. Starting the year off right by setting my theme. Everyone needs a rule of life, even the nonbeliever, for we need a measure to test our lives against. 

Are we living up to our expectations for a moral life, such as “are we doing all the good we can, to all we can, by every means we can, as long as we can?” While this was John Wesley’s admonition to the people called Methodists, the same principle applies to all people of good nature. Or do we live for the good of numero uno only? 

Self care is an important part of my rule of life, but this doesn’t make me a selfish person. It gives me the strength and stamina to be generous with my time and energy for others. While I no longer am actively engaged in person to person ministry, my facebook pages regularly reach over 800 people each week and my WordPress blogs reach about another 200. 

People on other continents are reading my posts, so the word is spreading. This is a power and a privilege I do not treat lightly. I’m thankful for a simple lifestyle which allows me the time to pursue my creative endeavors in my studio. For those of you who do buy my art, remember I donate 40% of the purchase price to the following causes: 

  • First UMC Hot Springs tithe
  • First UMC Hot Springs Community Outreach fund
  • REV. Paul Atkins, urban missionary @canvascommunity
  • UMC Missionary Elizabeth Soward, Tanzania 

Happy New Year, Cornelia  

Check my work on Facebook at Artandicon 

GENERATION TO GENERATION: Unresolved Loss

Ancestry, art, Civil War, Faith, Family, grief, Healing, Imagination, Lost Cause, Ministry, ministry, purpose, purpose, Racism, Spirituality, Stress, Uncategorized, Work

Civil War doctors treating a wounded soldier.


The danger of unresolved grief or loss in one generation is the inheritance of the following generations. More people were killed in our Civil War than in all our other wars before or after. This loss, as well as the slow economic recovery in the south, has contributed to today’s bifurcated nation. Today we call it urban/rural or blue/red, but the ancient “us vs. them” metaphor still holds true. 

This past year I’ve been journaling about the LOST CAUSE, that “late unpleasantness” of over 150 years ago. Over seven generations have passed, but many of these phrases and words are still in Southern mouths. I think unfinished grief for the loss and disruption of that way of life has carried over into many of the troubles we have today: continued racism, rise of white supremacists and nationalists, economic inequalities, and ecological destruction of our environment.

. 

Confederate soldier with forty pounds of gear

We also are at war with our better selves, for too many of us have addictions to work, busyness, achievement, substances, relationships, or fixing things that can’t be fixed. If we all worked on our own problems, as much as we worked on everyone else’s, the world would be a better place. 

Dr. Mary Walker, Syracuse Medical College, Surgeon


After all, if we read our scripture correctly, and by this I mean “without the belief I alone am the savior of the world” preconception, we’d see the very people who walked with Jesus Christ, ate the bread he blessed and broke, and saw him heal the sick and raise the dead weren’t able to make a perfect church or a perfect world in their lifetimes. 

No one in over 2,000 years since then has done this either. What makes us think we are so special? This isn’t to say our calling is a LOST CAUSE, but to remind us God’s timing is at work (kairos), not our hurried, human timing (chronos). 

If this relieves you of some small burden at the closing of this year, God bless us every one!

If you wonder where some of the common phrases you hear people use without batting an eyelid, check out the PDF below. 

SOUTHERN SLANG AND THE CIVIL WAR LINK: 13 pages!

Click to access Slang%20of%20the%20American%20Civil%20War.pdf

WORK IN PROGRESS: Landscape 

art, Creativity, Faith, Holy Spirit, Imagination, instagram, mystery, Painting, photography, Reflection, renewal, Spirituality, Uncategorized, vision

stage 3, unfinished acrylic painting, artandicon


This is on my easel right now. Last autumn on a warm and sunny day, I took an Instagram photo below of the woods near my home.  Maybe we’ll have one ofthose days   again, with no rain!

The photo above is  my most recent painting. I’m letting it set overnight, to see if I need to work it some more. A fresh eye will see better tomorrow. I’ve spent 4 hours on it today. 

Notice I didn’t paint all the trees in the foreground. Photographic truth is different from artistic truth. We know this is the same place by the line of the hill, the placement of the bushes in the background and the staggered line of trees in the foreground. If details are omitted, we don’t worry. If the colors are varied, we understand the artist is responding to the emotions of the landscape, rather than to the facts of the site. 

photo edited in instagram

In the same way, biblical truths may be operating in the parables and stories Jesus told us. For some people, the miracles themselves are mere “truth stories” which serve to open up the mysteries of God. For these people, science is how they understand their world, but God’s word is the way they understand how to relate to God and God’s creation. 
If they can hold this creative tension in their minds, it isn’t any different than seeing this painting as a true image of the place it represents. 

After all, as Jacob said when he woke from his sleep, “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!” 
And he was afraid, and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” — Genesis 28:16-17

The gates of heaven are all about us, if only we have the eyes to see them. We are always within the house of God. I find this awesome, life changing, and spirit filling. Recognizing God’s presence everywhere should change how we pursue our lives, our work and our relationships also. 

ILLUSION AND REALITY: The Uysal Clothespin Sculpture

art, Faith, Imagination, Philosophy, Stress, Uncategorized

Built for the Festival of the Five Seasons in Chaudfontaine Park, which lies on the outskirts of Liege, Belgium, a giant clothespin sculpture appears to be holding on to a mound of dirt and grass.
Designed by Turkish artist Mehmet Ali Uysal, a professor of art at the Middle East Technical University, the giant sculpture is just one piece in a string of Uysal works that rely on flawless illusion.

One of the most difficult tasks in seminary was learning words can posses more than one meaning according to their use in certain eras and contexts. 

Socrates believed the senses don’t grasp reality in any way, but the soul was the true receptacle of truth. The physical body was an obstacle to the search for truth. What we see in this world is imperfect, while the real, spiritual world of the Forms is perfect. Aristotle saw ultimate reality in physical objects, which could be known through experience. 

These are the gyrations which an art mind encounters on the way toward a theological education. My Rosetta Stone moment arrived when I realized we artists have defined beauty in various ways across the centuries. When I connected beauty and reality, the lights came on in my mind!

In our world today even the word truth had a fluid meaning. For some, truth means it represents a concrete and unchanging reality. For others, truth is a matter how they feel at the moment, whether the facts are true or not. 

Can we make our art with emotion and also use our reason at the same time? Can we hold ideal truths and live with imperfect reality? These are questions for life, art, and faith. 

Image: http://unusualplaces.org/clothespin-sculpture/

Hope and Transformation 

art, Creativity, Evangelism, exercise, Faith, Healing, Icons, Imagination, Ministry, poverty, purpose, renewal, salvation, Spirituality, Stations of the Cross, Uncategorized, vision

Happy to report this altar has found a home! It’s a one of a kind piece, made from found objects and items no longer found useful around my home. I found most of these items while walking around the local hospital, while others are from broken pieces of my jewelry and my mother’s old treasure hoard. The three matching pulls across the bottom are from the old kitchen cabinets of my 1965 era condo. For some reason, that huge block of wood called my name, as did the snuff pack and the bent radiator cap. Some one lost part of their hub cap, while I lost interest in a home improvement project for which those red acanthus supports were intended. 

While we often give up hope on the detritus of our life, only to throw it out the window or stuff it into a box, never to see it again, we still want something bright new and shiny. Many people today never speak of a struggle because they think it shows God isn’t with them or worse, God is punishing them. Yet the promise of Christ is for the hurting, the broken, the poor, the sick, and the oppressed. 

The message of this altar is Christ died to transform those without hope and for those we’ve given up hope they’ll ever change. As long as we breathe, we can hope. With our dying breath, Christ will complete us for glory if we believe in a redeeming God whose power is greater than our own struggle to rebel. 

You’d be surprised at the junk I find in the roadways and byways, but that’s where Christ did all his great miracles of healing, in the streets and fields of his world. Maybe this altar is calling us to bring Christ out into the world, instead of celebrating him safely within our sheltered walls. 

The Deisis Altar: The Handing Over

“Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.” ~~ John 19:25-27

Field of Dreams 

art, butterflies, Creativity, grief, Imagination, Painting, sleep, Uncategorized

John Atkinson Grimshaw: The Butterfly

Spring forward has done me in & brought me down. I have succumbed to the couch, with the shades drawn against the extra light pouring in through the windows. No amount of espresso in the morning will overcome this lethargy. The promise of a chocolate bunny isn’t enough to drag me off my recliner. 

I have unfinished art works on the easel, finished works awaiting hanging hooks and wires, and a chapter in my scifi spiritual journey novel to post on line, but I’m not rising from the couch to attend to these interests. This is the fifth month anniversary of my daughter’s death, a grief I thought I was past, for the most part. 

Mostly yes, but completely, no. Art is a process, for a work isn’t completed in an instant. Grief isn’t finished in a short time either, for it’s  a journey which is sometimes straight forward and other times circuitous. Sometimes it seems like our own grief journey is a death spiral! Like a heroic pilot, we pull our airplane out of the fall just before we graze the ground. We soar so high into the bright sky until we nearly stall and fall, but we dive back down again. This up and down upon the unseen hills and valleys of the air scares our audience, amd if we had any sense, it would scare us too. 

We are mostly too numb to know the difference, so we aren’t aware of the effect we have on others. This is the blessing of grief, our oblivion of experiences beyond those most important and nessary for existence. Life gets simpler in grief:  we narrow our choices, things don’t seem to matter as much, and we enjoy the basics more often. Seeking out a one of a kind item takes too much effort. 

Grief allows us to note the simple things, which we once took for granted: smiles, laughter, silence, and a loving touch. 

A butterfly alighting on my hand tempts me to visit a field of flowers, but only in my dreams.