painting

THE MOMENT BEFORE 

art, Creativity, Faith, nature, Painting, Spirituality, texas

 

The moment before my daughter came into this world, my husband reminded me of the doctor’s orders: “Whatever you do, don’t push!”

“Don’t tell me (horrible expletive deleted) not to push! I’ll (more expletives deleted) push if I want to! His look of shock and horror lasted only seconds before he turned for the hallway door to shout, “I think this baby is coming now!”

We had been at the hospital all day long waiting to induce my labor. The nurses misunderstood my doctor’s orders, so they only gave me a bit of the oxytocin, but not enough to start the cramping of my womb. I felt a mild twinge, but nothing exciting was on the program at zero dark thirty in the morning. Coffee break came and went. My husband ate lunch as I sucked on a damp wash rag. Hospital food never looked so good.

Exhausted, I napped in the afternoon.  Sometime after five, my doctor made his evening rounds  “Why hasn’t this woman had her baby yet? Crank it up!”

Normal labor sneaks up on a woman. My own mother said she attended a picnic the day before my birth, so she thought the initial twinges of labor were a spot of indigestion from the day before. My daddy, who was a doctor, always got a good laugh from mother’s self diagnosing, for indigestion comes sooner rather than later. Nevertheless, labor moves progressively from mild to intense and from widely spaced to closely packed. The moment a child enters this world is still unique. When the nurse turned the handle on the oxytocin, a flood of chemicals hit my blood stream all at once. In a moment, I knew I had been hit by a freight train. I went from zero to ten on the pain scale instantly. I was glad my husband had his senses about him, because mine had been knocked to Pluto, which was still a planet back in these ancient times.

When the moment cane for me to push, I knew it was time. To live in a state of awareness and to be open to the information and stimuli all about us is to live in the present moment  some say, “I couldn’t do this, for I would go crazy with all the details to be sorted out!” I think those who live in the present moment realize the unity of all things. Some call it the ONE, while others see the ONE who makes all things. As an artist, I see the beauty that flows through all things. As a person of faith, I see images which remind me of stories from my holy scriptures. The cloud in Christian symbolism represents God’s presence, for God, in the form of a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, led the Hebrew people during the wilderness wandering. In the baptism of Jesus, the cloud opens to reveal the Holy Spirit in a bodily form, like a dove.
“And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.””  (Mark 1:10-11)

in the moments when we take a stand, walk outside of our comfort zone, stretch our boundaries, our reach for the stars, we need to realize the affirmation comes only afterwards. It doesn’t come from the people who are looking on from the banks of the water. It comes from above, from the cloud enshrouded God. And we may be the only ones who hear God’s voice. We mustn’t let the cacophony of this world distract us from hearing the still, small voice of God. Sometimes we need to practice our own silence in order to hear the silence of the present moment speaking to us more clearly.

WATCHING FROM AFAR

Creativity, Fear, Healing, Health, Imagination, Meditation, Mental Illness, Painting, photography, renewal, salvation, Spirituality, Stations of the Cross, vision

Watching From Afar acrylic on canvas 16" x 20'

Watching From Afar
acrylic on canvas
16″ x 20′

No one wants to be on the train that’s wrecking. Not many want to watch the disaster unfolding, but when you care intensely about a person, sometimes you cannot take your eyes off the pain and trauma. You watch from the cheap seats in the balcony, rather than paying the full price of orchestra pit, where you can get the front row view, up close and personal.

The Gospel accounts of the crucifixion tell us that the Temple leadership and the Roman soldiers had front row seats at this execution, but the crowds and the followers watched from afar.

Those that had an interest only in the spectacle left once it was over. Those who cared about the person hanging on the cross stayed even after he spent his last breath.

“And when all the crowds who had gathered there for this spectacle saw what had taken place, they returned home, beating their breasts. But all his acquaintances, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things.” (Luke 23:48-49)

This snow scene is the fourth in a series of a single tree representing the various stations of the cross. My personal banker, who’s a member oft church, jogs past this tree all the time. It’s near the Hot Springs Country Club at the corner of Malvern and Bellaire. I took several photos, played in Photoshop in my camera+app and went to work painting on 16″ x 20″ canvases. 

I divided the canvas almost equally into quarters and halves. The heavens and the earth are top and bottom. The Christ tree almost splits in two the right and left halves. 

“At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split.” (Matthew 27:51)

The quiet stillness of the snow reminds me both of the pause of death and the hope for the resurrection. Both are contained in the cross of Christ, but those who watch from afar at this moment do not yet have this hope. 

The people who live their lives as one train wreck after another want to get off this track, but don’t want to give up control of their lives to a power that can break the chains of death that have held us. “To die to our old selves” is to become a train wreck in the flesh. As we give up these old parts of us, old relationships are rent and have to be reformed in a new manner or we have to part ways with old friends and make new ones instead. 

“So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

The good news is that the cross of Christ unites both heaven and earth, life and death, hope and despair, as well as peace and travail. 

A PAINTED DREAM: GOING LEFT TO TURN RIGHT

butterflies, Creativity, Dreamscape, Holy Spirit, Icons, Imagination, Meditation, mystery, Painting, purpose, Secrets, sleep, Spirituality, Travel, Uncategorized, vision, Work

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A few months ago, I woke up with this Franz Marc blue horse in my mind. Clouds were overhanging the Rocky Mountains in the distance. On the high plains stood a solitary tree that had several Spirit feathers attached to the limbs. Red threads fluttered in the breeze. This horse, which I knew by now was my own self in a spirit animal form, was coming close to this tree.

So, is it a Tree of Life? An Ancestor Tree (burial site)? A Good Luck Tree for Travelers and Wayfarers? Or is it a Marker Tree that says “Killroy was here”? Maybe it’s just my brain “taking out the trash of the previous weeks and days,” so that I can deal with my waking life more easily!

I’m still pondering the meaning. I had to paint this image to get it out of my mind and into the real world. Maybe here I will discover its truth for me.

I also needed to work on something that I could finish quickly and feel the joy of immediate accomplishment. I’m involved in a number of long term projects in my creative life right now. I’m on the third draft of THE WANDERING SOUL, my first installment novel, which I’m posting as weekly chapters at http://www.souljournieswordpress.wordpress.com. I’m also writing a second novel, THE ACCIDENTAL VACATION, which is in the journal or handwritten stage just now.

I have been painting butterflies, but have a commission for an icon. With my own work, I can go crazy and push the paint wherever the Spirit moves me. The icon, however, falls within boundaries and rules. I have to have my mind and heart still in order to submit to that discipline. It’s not my first nature! I do it, however, because this focused work allows me more power and freedom when I return to my own creative process. It’s a mystery, but sometimes we go left to turn right.

Pantocrator icon: Progress Report

Creativity, Holy Spirit, Icons, Imagination, Love, Meditation, Ministry, mystery, Prayer, purpose, Secrets, Spirituality, Uncategorized, vision, Work

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Progress: the 13th hour on the Pantocrator Icon.
Acrylic on gold primed canvas. 18″ x 24″.

Good things come to those who persevere.

Painting an icon is one of the ancient spiritual disciplines. The artist isn’t just copying by rote or filling in a design, as in a paint by numbers craft piece.

Instead, the artist is rendering a true copy of a window into heaven. As I focus on the image, the image is also focusing on me. As I seek to be faithful to the forms I see, in a mysterious manner unknown and unseen, the icon’s presence allows the Spirit of God to work within my heart and mind to transform me and bring me closer to God’s original image.

There are days in my life when I think I should paint more icons. There are days in this world when I wish all people honored and venerated the holy icons, or at least honored the call for peace within their own religious traditions. Perhaps that day will come in my lifetime, but if not, I can live in peace and not contribute to the warring nature of this world.

THE HOLY NODE AND THE FOUND BUTTERFLY

butterflies, Creativity, Health, Icons, Imagination, Meditation, Mental Illness, mystery, Physical Training, purpose, renewal, Strength, Travel, Uncategorized, vision

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I’m not a fast walker, for my first goal in walking isn’t to break any record for my usual 1.5 mile jaunt around Mercy Hospital here in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Neither do I stroll, for Bon Jovi and the Boss sing a strong striding cadence in my ear. I can manage the hills better in one direction than another, for at least one is nearly 45 degrees. I go up this hill once a week. It never gets less steep. The rest of the week I go down that hill. At my age, there’s no sense taking any more years off my life than necessary!

My goals as I walk are to be more conscious of my body, to care for it better, to build my body for endurance and health, to be outside in the sunlight (natural vitamin D), and to develop a better attitude (exercise releases endorphins that lift one’s mood). Walking also seems to clear my mind of worry and anxiety about others.

In that large hospital, I know that healing is going on. While some may be “losing the battle” against whatever dread disease has attacked them, they have “won the war” and received their final healing from God. We think our life is over when we close our eyes and breathe no more, but our life is just beginning in a newer and more wonderful way!

As I make my rounds about the hospital grounds, the wind blows through my hair, the sun falls on my face, and I see the sun shaped shadows of the pines and the pear trees. Even the ornamental lake reflects the colors of the sky and clouds. Heaven and earth are more connected here even though my path is just beside the eternally busy bypass of Highway 270.

There are nodes in space and time at which the intersection of heaven and earth seem to open up to one another. The Celtic tradition calls these “thin places.” All across the world we can find sites that were considered holy by one successive people & faith after another. When you walk into such a place, you can feel the years of prayers within the space.

This route I take, while short, has become a holy node for me. It was the reason for two found object works: The No Room Inn and The Healing Christ. I also did a landscape of that decorative pond. Now I am painting the various butterflies I have collected on my journeys. These are symbols of the new life to come because they wrap themselves in a cocoon (grave cloths). I think of them as an icon of the new life we live when we see the light of what is possible in Jesus Christ himself:

“I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness.” — John 12:46

Art is Always a Suprise

Creativity, Imagination, Meditation, mystery, Secrets, Spirituality, Uncategorized, vision, Work

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Dropped by for new art supplies. Big sale at Michael’s. This tiny haul? $175–I only buy the best pigments & best quality tools. This is the way I was trained: like the old masters, to make my work last not just a lifetime, but for centuries.

We live in a throw away world now, however, so not too many care beyond today. Disposable plates, cups, relationships, and beliefs are tossed in favor of the latest pattern or desire.

My image may seem frozen in time, but on the wall in the changing light of God’s day and seen through the eyes of our changing hearts, it reveals something always new and fresh.

That’s the difference between art and a picture: you’ll get tired of a picture, but art is always surprising the viewer.

SNOW CHANGES EVERYTHING

Holy Spirit, Imagination, Meditation, Ministry, mystery, purpose, renewal, Secrets, Travel, Uncategorized, vision, Work

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Classes get cancelled, teachers have to reschedule. Parents have to miss work and pay checks to stay home with the kids or go to work and pay extra for child care. Some people make it home by the grace of God and the angels that walk among us, while others abandon their wrecked vehicles on the icy roads and trudge their weary way home alone. Some of us heeded the warnings, slept late, and never left our warm houses. Some of the city’s homeless citizens froze to death on the cold streets last night even though multiple warming centers were open. They went with a warm coat and blankets, their need to be outside overriding their need to be warm. Some people feel safer in the open, even if it doesn’t make sense to you or me.

Most of the time we see winter in this way, like an old sumi ink painting: black and white with only a few marks denoting the strengths of the shapes and their lines. The rest we only imagine into being from what we remember to be true in the other seasons of the landscape.

So it is with our spiritual life, when we are caught in a time when things are out of sorts and nothing goes right. This isn’t what we signed up for! Maybe it’s a health crisis and now you can’t work at the job you love. Maybe you just got a pay raise, but now the company has been sold and you’ve been outsourced; life ain’t fair! Or the love of your life decides to leave, or your kid says that he/she wants to change to a different sex than the one you’ve loved this child as for all these years. Surely this is the winter of your discontent!

God asks the following question of his suffering servant, who seems to unjustly be the victim of woe,

“Have you entered the storehouses of the snow, or have you seen the storehouses of the hail, which I have reserved for the time of trouble,
for the day of battle and war? What is the way to the place where the light is distributed, or where the east wind is scattered upon the earth?” (Job 38:22-24)

Of course not. Job hasn’t visited these unknown places! They are known only to the good Lord himself. The lesson God has for Job and us is that calamity falls upon both the good and the evil of this world, but God is always with us. We want to be spared from all harm, just as we want to spare our children from any distress, harm, trial, or pain. This keeps our children from growing strong, however, so just as we endure trials in life, we grow stronger spiritually with God by our side. Either that, or we freeze to death because we didn’t want help. One of the most frequent names for God in the Old Testament is Help or Helper. When Job recognizes God speaking to him, he reframed his thinking:

“I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. ‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge? ’ Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. ‘Hear, and I will speak; I will question you, and you declare to me. ’ I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you;
therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:2-6)

Sometimes we need to see the black and white world in the beauty of God’s colors.

THE NO ROOM INN

at risk kids, Children, Evangelism, Fear, Holy Spirit, home, Icons, Imagination, Ministry, poverty, purpose, renewal, salvation, vision, Work

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Context is everything. In the real world of my daily hikes, the objects in this artwork are pieces of trash that I’ve found lying near the path that I walk. Put together with a fresh eye to shape and color, they become instead a nativity scene. I live in Hot Springs, Arkansas, a place known for its healing waters to the native peoples who once roamed these lands and now known as our nation’s first National Park. We have two large hospitals, a rarity for a town of only 35,500 people, but we also serve outlying rural counties. If you want healing, this is the place to come, for we have spas, bathhouses, great food, a beautiful lake and mountains.

The local YMCA is just down the road from the Mercy Hospital campus. If I leave the Y, I can get a 1.5 mile hike with varying grades and enough level spots to recover my wind and get the whole done in about 30 minutes. I’ve about trained the courtesy cart lady to wave at me and pass me by. At first I think I struggled enough that she would stop to offer me a lift.

When we speak about context in a work of art or context in a biblical verse, we mean that we need to look at the surroundings. The surroundings in an art work include the artist’s life experiences, as well as the image they were viewing. We artists pour the sum of who we are into the whole of the world as we see it.

Likewise with the biblical context, we ask: what was the writer’s intent, what do we know of his life experience, what seems to be his goal in writing as he does, what does his choice of words or images suggest, why are some stories unique and not repeated by other writers, and to what do the stories before and immediately after point?

In the New Testament, Luke is the only writer to mention that the birth of Jesus took place outside of an established lodging place. He uses the Greek word Kataluma, which means “lodging, inn, or guest room,” depending on the context. He is also the only one to mention the parable of the Good Samaritan. Healing takes place for the victim of bandits at the inn and for the whole world at the no room inn.

“And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn” –Luke 2:7

“He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him” –Luke 10:34

The No Room Inn Nativity has the standard imagery of the Holy Family: Joseph is the tall, blue, flattened paint can with the radiator head; Mary is is the crushed coca-cola can with the tin can head and screws for eyes; the angel on the left is a rain washed McDonald’s French fry container with a tin can lid for a head; and the baby Jesus is an orange plastic cross/halo resting in a VIP parking ticket from a NASCAR race I attended in November. Alone, these are just pieces of trash, but together on a gold background, this collage becomes an icon worthy of reminding us that the King of this world began his life in a No Room Inn.

This Jesus who came to heal the rift between God and humanity, began his human life on the outside. Those of us who feel like we aren’t meant for the inside need to realize that Jesus spent his whole life on the margins, healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and casting out demons, while at the same time afflicting the comfortable insiders who came for the show. Context is everything. Take your ministry out into the streets, find the broken bits of “trash” that have the potential to become new. Begin a healing ministry, not for those inside your comfortable inn, but for those who are told, “No room!”

A DEEPER SOURCE OF WATER

Creativity, Health, Imagination, Italy, photography, Spirituality, Strength, Stress, Travel, vision, Work

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I’m sixty five years old. I have an iPhone. When I see an interesting image, I stop and park my car. I take a little walk, getting in a few more steps for my otherwise sedentary life. The viewpoint then becomes important, otherwise I’m just taking snapshots. The place has “called me,” as we say, for I’ve driven past hundreds of trees on my way home, but this one tree stands by itself, calling for a visitor to commune with it. As I clambered down into the stream bed, I noticed the water flow was weak due to our lack of rain. The large black basalt outflow rocks were quite dry, so I sat down for a lower vantage point. This was good, but I decided to lie down, to get one last view.

Did I mention that I was wearing bright red pedal pushers and an equally bright yellow blouse? The sight of a gray haired gal taking photos while lying down in the midst of a stream did get celebrated by a number of the passing vehicles. I waved back, it’s Arkansas. Folks don’t often do out of the ordinary here.

When I was an art student, I had the privilege to study art history for a summer in Italy. Two days a week our professors took us on bus trips to see art in situ and three days we worked in the studios over the town square of Cortona, our home base. In a historically rich and artistically wealthy nation, the Italians don’t bat an eye when they see an artist sketching or painting in front of a monument, sculpture, or landscape. I even found that putting my tool box with coins and paper money down near my feet would bring additional gifts of appreciation from passers by.

In fact, the Italians are downright spoiled by the beauty that surrounds them. (There’s a Borromini church! Uh? Oh, so?!). We too are sated by that which surrounds us, but it isn’t a reverence for the cultural treasures of antiquity. The Italians have an art history that extends back through pre Etruscan times (1000 BC). Our history begins in 1620 at Plymouth Rock. We are a people who would rather tear it down and build something new. When I see this tree standing strong, offering its branches and shade as a shelter to any who come near, I think of an old home or an old church that has protected and provided for generations of families that have come under its “roof.”

Just as I had no fear when I lay down in the middle of the stream, the tree has such deep roots that even when the stream itself drys up, it has a deeper source of water to tap. This is where most of us fall apart in our daily lives, our creative lives, and our spiritual lives. I speak as if these were three separate items, but in fact, each one is only a facet of a singular treasure. When our daily life is stressed, our creative and spiritual lives suffer. When our spiritual life is ignored, our creative and daily life withers. When we aren’t creating, we don’t feel alive spiritually or humanly.

We each need to find the deeper source of water, that will refresh our thirsty souls and spirits.

“Blessed are those who trust in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.
They shall be like a tree planted by water,
sending out its roots by the stream.
It shall not fear when heat comes,
and its leaves shall stay green;
in the year of drought it is not anxious,
and it does not cease to bear fruit.”
~~ Jeremiah 17:7-8

The Sunlit Tree

Imagination, Meditation, Ministry, photography, Spirituality, Travel, Uncategorized, vision, Work

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I am not a point A to point B person, but what right brained artist is? Yet, making a work of art requires planning and structure, just as building a house requires plans, or both will fall apart before very long. This is why some of our efforts continue to please us many years into the future, while others, with our more experienced eye, now are relegated to paint over land.

This field of trees caught my eye, not because it was full of light or promise of abundance, but because only one great tree stood proud with a glorious yellow robe amid a field of dried up stunted trees and weeds. It was so different that I had to detour from the interstate, retrace my path on the old state highway and take a picture with my camera. I’ve kept this photo for a dozen years, waiting for the time when I had both the skill and the spirit to bring it to life as a painting.

I have shown this photo to various people over the years. “That’s nice, a big tree, it’s a lot of yellow and brown, and it looks half dead and half alive” are some of the comments I’ve heard. I’m used to this, for most folks don’t have vision. They cannot see the promise in the grey clouds of the rainbow to come. The rainbow must be there in all her radiance, dancing all seven of her colors across the heavens, for the hope of the promise to be written in bold enough letters for most of us to read it in the sky.

A few rare people have vision. Some are cooks, some are tinkerers, some are prophets, and some are artists. If I had copied this photo, I would have made a very different painting, one in which all the values are nearly the same, for it was an overcast day when I took the image. As a photograph, it was unworthy, but as a sketch or a plan for a future work, it was worth keeping. My mother saw this photo and said, “This is a strong tree that survives and shelters others.” My Mother had vision.

I could have gone in several directions with this painting. One choice I considered was the gathering grey clouds anticipating a certain storm. The lighting of the trees and the field would have been more dramatic. I decided to go with a brilliant autumn day, with the sky and fields full of light. All the trees were in their full dress glory as the winds shake their leaves of yellows, oranges, and reds.

The verse from Ezekiel 17:24 came into my mind: “And all the trees of the field shall know that I am the Lord; I bring low the high tree, and make high the low tree, dry up the green tree, and make the dry tree flourish. I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it.”

This vision of sunlight, warm wind, healing and uplifting the dried up landscape brought hope into my heart! We may be discouraged for a season, but our standing rooted as we trust the God who loves us means that we will be there when God’s promises come true. If we are the dry tree, we will flourish! If we are the low tree, we will be made high!

As artists, we are constantly creating, so we share this activity in common with God. Do we have the vision to see beyond our circumstances to God’s promises that await? Do we have the courage to continually work along side God to bring God’s vision into reality? Take your sketchbook, your easel, or your camera this week out into the countryside. Find the tree that calls you apart from your designated journey. Enter into a conversation with this place. Perhaps you are not used to being still, or quiet. Listen to the sounds of this place. Do not be too quick to hurry off to worship the idol, “I’ve got better or more important things to do with my life.”