Artandicon's Blog

  • More Sunsets

    How many of us get to admire the great creative exuberance of the divine palette strewn across the sky twice a day in our ordinary days? Most of us are too busy breakfast grabbing, caffeine swilling, clothes donning, and storming the door in a mad dash for the morning rush to work. Then we join…

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  • The Inspired Church

    My newest painting is from a photo I took of a church in downtown Hot Springs on one cloudy spring day. It wasn’t much to look at as a photo, but I was called to stop and snap its image at that moment. I learned long ago in ministry to listen to those promptings of…

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  • Rabbit! Rabbit!

    Welcome to April! Although we celebrated the vernal equinox on the 20th last month, the church counts March 21 as the equinox date in the ecclesiastical calendar, rather than the actual date, which can vary between March 19-21. This is important because the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE established Easter would be held on…

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  • Spring Flowers

    How many colors exist in creation? Many more than we can buy in a tube at the art supply store and even more than the number of paint chips at our local building supply store. Recently I gave my adult art class an assignment to use their primary colors and white only to mix new…

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  • Hope and Suffering

    “You totally (should) become his nature, deny his being apart from you; you should be he himself, not Christians, but Christ, otherwise you will be no use to the coming god.” —C. G. Jung, The Red Book, p. 137. “No one can be spared the way of Christ, since this way leads to what is…

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  • The Suffering Hero

    We had a bright taste of spring in last Friday’s art class with the yellow daffodils from Gail’s yard. She and Mike have come a long way in their powers of observation and rendering. They take their time to see, study, and really observe intentionally whatever objects are before them. These two students have been…

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  • PRAYER: Listening to an Icon Most of us separate our lives into doing and being: we are creatures of comfort at times, and then we expend energy doing chores or work at different times. We live bifurcated lives, even if we’ve heard the admonition to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:16), we work without prayer…

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  • PROMISE OF HOPE

    Today is an official snow day here in our town. While other parts of our state got up to 5 inches of the fluffy white stuff, we got a mere dusting. However, our temperatures fell into the low teens with wind chills in the single digits. Those of you from our northern states might think…

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  • Hope and Transformation 

    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…

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  • Meaning of the Crucifixion

    Most of us have grown up on the teaching that Jesus is “The Lamb that takes away the sins of the world,” this is known as the Substitution or Atonement of Christ. He is the sacrifice instead of us, that sets us free from the bondage to sin and death.     What if instead, Jesus…

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