For a Christian, redeemed by the work of Christ and living within the norms of Scripture and under the leadership of the Holy Spirit, the lordship of Christ should include an interest in the arts. A Christian should use these arts to the glory of God—not just as tracts, but as things of beauty to the praise of God.
– Francis Schaeffer
I’m not good at producing visual art. I love to write and make music, but when it comes to drawing, painting, sculpting, or creating…well, I have very little ability. As in, a stick figure is a challenge for me.
I’ve always wanted to be good at these things. There is something so seemingly peaceful about painting a sunset, and when I’m enjoying a beautiful day at the zoo with my youngest, I’m drawn to the painters who have picked out their scene and settled into a comfortable place with their easel and brush. They look so peaceful.
So, to experience this kind of quiet time, to try to and feel the sensation of putting my emotions onto a sketch bad, I have tried drawing through the years.
For folks who are stick figure challenged, the problem begins before anything is even on the paper. What do I draw? And the question isn’t asked because I’m digging deep into my soul, the question is asked because I literally don’t know what to draw. So, I doodle. And this is what has come from my hand through my adult years (and as you can see, “adult years” may need to be clarified):
Interpretation: wildflowers (or, according to my eight-year old, a sunflower with a disease)
Interpretation: super, cool block letters.
Interpretation: a beach scene. duh.
Interpretation: no idea. I have no earthly idea what that is. Worms in a bucket?
And often the doodles found on slips of paper in my Bible or notebooks are of boxes. Because I usually resort to boxes. Because I really can’t draw wildflowers. Or beach scenes. Or worms in buckets. But I’ve mastered the 3-D box. Here is one of my most supreme drawings:
My mother-in-law, on the other hand, is an actual artist. She’s made some pretty amazing creations, including several unique scrapbooks which I’ve enjoyed looking through over the years. I decided to give this art a try when Chris and I were first married. I’d seen her do a number of amazing books, and not only did it seem easy, but it seemed….fun.
So, my mother-in-law bought me everything I needed to make my first scrapbook.
I remember sitting at our kitchen table with the supplies spread around me. I took out photos from our wedding day and I was ready to get creative. After an hour, I had accomplished one page. This one page had a picture glued in the middle with the words, “My Love,” written out in those super, cool block letters. But that’s not all. I also had a heart sticker attached to the corner of the picture.
It didn’t take me long to conclude that scrapbooking was not fun. In fact, not only was it not fun, I decided it was actually an activity from the devil himself. My block letters looked like a note I would have passed to a friend in the hallway during Junior High school, and my picture had glue seeping out the sides. Which I tried to hide with the heart sticker. Which didn’t work very well.
After ONE ENTIRE HOUR OF MY LIFE, I had a picture glued to a piece of paper, a sticker, and two block-lettered words across the bottom of the page. Who are these people that do this for relaxation purposes? Something strange goes on with these kinds because I only experienced a racing heart and perfuse sweating.
I never scrapbooked again, folks. That one page was my one and only. I paid my sister to put together a scrapbook of our wedding day. Two things about this: 1. It was ridiculously good 2. She said she enjoyed doing it.
Whatever.
I put the book on my coffee table and proudly showed it to my mother-in-law when she came to visit. And I may or may not have accepted initial praise for this scrapbook. Which may or may not have led my mother-in-law lovingly purchasing more scrapbook material. Which may or may not have forced me to show my true colors.
So drawing and scapbooking haven’t worked out too well for me.
In recent years I’ve tried painting. Vincent Van Gogh once said, “If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.”
I have a pretty strong voice that says (screams) ‘you cannot paint…just look at your “drawings.’” Never-the-less, when my youngest asked if we could paint together at a pottery studio, I decided to squelch the voice inside that said, “just watch your daughter paint because, well, block letters…” and I chose to paint some pottery with her.
I picked out a small vase and envisioned filling the blank canvas with flowers and simple words like: love, joy, and peace. I envisioned something like this:
Lily picked out a jewelry box in the shape of an ice cream cone. She fretted a few times over some mistakes she made, but the end result was lovely and it looked very much like she intended it to look:
And this, my friends was my end result:
Yes. Yes, that says “Peaca” instead of “Peace.” Yet again, I was sweating profusely out of frustration over my inability to paint flowers on branches, which led to a deeper frustration over my intial “a” in the word peace, which led to over-thinking the letter “a,” which led to my simple word coming out as “Peeka,” according to my eight-year old’s pronunciation.
She couldn’t stop laughing, which subsequently led the young girl at the table behind us to come observe my masterpiece. The little girl tilted her head and said, “It’s nice. But what does ‘Peaca’ mean?”
Hilarious. Everyone everywhere is hilarious.
Through much laughter, my daughter and I continued our conversation about painting that evening, and I considered two important lessons about art:
First, I have not been given the gift of producing visual art. I just haven’t. And this is so, very OK because I can still appreciate it. I can appreciate art perhaps even more because of my inabilities in this area. I’m in awe of those who are gifted in creating, people like my mother-in-law who can paint a scene like this, making you feel like you’re actually in the field.
She said of the painting, “I call it ‘Passenger Side’ Balm, Florida. Imagine a field of cabbage springing up from seed, nourished by God himself and harvested to feed his children. These are the glorious thoughts I think when gazing out the passenger side and seeing the glory of my Father.”
It’s breathtaking, and the fact that someone can move a brush in such a way to create a masterpiece is mind-boggling to me. There is no doubt that as believers we should be appreciating, taking in, considering, and enjoying art. After all, our Creator is an artist, making stunning pieces from nothing – a world filled with striking sunsets, strange looking insects, unique shells, magnificent trees, and flowers with depth and complexity.
It’s all so beautiful.
But I also believe there is something equally beautiful about the process of creating something. It may not be that the end result is perfect. The completed vase could have blobs of pink paint instead of flowers and words like “peaca” instead of peace. It could. But even then, the process has significance. The process of becoming captivated by a beautiful day is as wonderful as the art produced because of its beauty; the process of baking a cake for a child’s birthday is as full of love as the sweet dessert once it comes out of the oven; the process of considering different shells on the beach with my eight-year old is as memorable as the necklace she made with the collection; the process of extracting a piece of old wood that someone had left for trash is as important as the table that is built and refinished.
The process has significance.
Whatever your creative expression, both the process and the product should celebrate God and all the things in His creation that He declared to be good. As artist Melissa Kircher writes:
“Art brings vibrance and beauty to our lives. Creativity is both a fully human and fully divine experience. It is an acknowledgement that something eternal and full of truth lies behind the temporal world in which we live. It focuses our eyes on the pain around us, the injustice in front of us, the joy abounding within us, and the pull we feel towards meaning and significance. Music moves us. Poetry connects us. Paintings shout at us. Dance energizes us. Art draws us back into the fold of humanity when we wander out full of pain, discouragement, and bitterness. It whispers, ‘You are not alone.'”
(www.melissakircher.com)
I continue to be inspired, maybe you will be too, to think outside the box (the 3-D one in my case) and explore the various ways to engage creatively. We are, after all, image-bearers of a creative God. And as I explore, I’m learning to appreciate the many different ways art is produced, but I’m also learning to find joy in the process, whether that process brings a sense of peace…or even a little peaca.
