painting

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

Friendship and Art

art, Creativity, Faith, Healing, Icons, Meditation, Ministry, ministry, Painting, Spirituality, United Methodist Church

THANK YOU FRIENDS!

I can’t express to you how glad I am to be with people who understand the scriptures which underpin my art. Others appreciate the art itself, but not the faith walk behind it. Y’all get both.

Thank you again. As an extrovert, your affection and affirmation encourages me in my journey and in my spiritual practices. I would do my work anyway, but like everyone, I enjoy the sharing of our lives and our ministries across the years. This makes our annual conference a means of grace for me. I hope it does the same for you.

THE MOMENT BEFORE

I’m glad to report I’ve made two new patrons of the arts today. These paintings will go to new homes to bless those spaces and provide an island of peace or a place of spiritual focus for those who come into their presence. Also a former patron showed up to take home the silver PIETA.

The purpose of the icon is to open a window into the holy, so we can see the face of Christ more clearly and know the presence of God more nearly. If my art can do this for folks, then it is also a modern icon. Thank you for being part of ARTANDICON, my friends. I’ll be back at the arena Wednesday morning until noonish.

Joy and Peace, Cornelia.

It Takes a Village 

arkansas, art, Creativity, Ministry, Painting, United Methodist Church

It takes a village to put on an art show, even for one person. My booth is at spot #58, just up from the University of Arkansas at Monticello Wesley Foundation’s booth. I can always count on Brother Kavan’s young people to help me get my setup put up! 

The Hot Springs Convention Center is conveniently located downtown in the heart of the historic district. The Arkansas United Methodist Church is holding its annual conference here. I’ve brought my artworks to exhibit since they have spiritual themes and icons. 

Cat, our conference liaison, helped me get my paintings inside. Then the two men from Thrivent Financial helped me build out the last two walls of my booth. Jason and Michael even brought me lunch back from town while I hung my art on the walls. 

I could not do this by myself of course. I don’t let the lack of help lined up in advance stop me from setting out, however. Folks watch a production like this going on and have to help, like Tom Sawyer’s fence painting. We get it done in record time with all the helping hands. 

Also, I’ve even sold two of my works already. I gave a discount for volume to my young patron of the arts. Let me do the same for you! 

I have all the works with me which are on this 2017 album. 

I’d like to have them bless your walls. Remember clergy can count these as “furnishings for housing expenses.” I will provide you with a receipt for your records. 

If you can’t come to Hot Springs, you can see my work on Facebook at ARTANDICON. Look under photos for the 2017 album. All my current works for sale are there. Shipping and packing costs would be an extra fee, but you could pick them up in Hot Springs also. 

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 

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. 

2015 in review

art, Creativity, Icons, Imagination, New Year, Painting, purpose, Spirituality, Uncategorized, Work

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 380 times in 2015. If it were a cable car, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Destruction

art, Creativity, Healing, Historic neighborhood, Lost Cause, Painting, Reflection, renewal, Uncategorized, vision

 The old Majestic Hotel, a historic property in Hot Springs, Arkansas, burned and was deemed irreparable. The city became the official owner after several years of attempting to convince the true owner to clean up the wreckage.

After demolition, the site will likely become a park or amphitheater. The good wrought from this debacle is our people are organized better than ever to encourage renovation and repairs before other historic properties get in such dilapidated condition.

Perhaps we could take a hint from this event: when our life or health is on the downward slide, we might want to take care of our unmet “repairs” so we can have our best life for the most number of years forward.

1 Corinthians 3:17–“If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.”