heavenly home

I'm going to do some catching up now, starting with a little surprise that came in at the last moment. Sandy Wenell Thornton is an excellent watercolorist who started the study of heaven with us in January, then had one family issue after another come up to interrupt her. I knew it had been quite a traumatic year for her and I figured that she had probabaly been a little too overwhelmed with life to take part in the final showing. But then she absolutely stunned me with this mixed media piece titled, "Home is a Place We've Never Been Before."

Her inspiration for the piece came from John 14:2-3: "In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there you may be also."

When dealing with the subject of losing someone near to us to death, Randy Alcorn writes, "At the same moment that they are overwhelmed with grief over what has happened to their loved one, the one they mourn is overcome with joy. For they are home at last. Home for the very first time." (This is from his book, In Light of Eternity, which we used for our study of heaven.) I think that Sandy might be drawing from some very personal experiences here, where we see an older woman opening a door to the home that Jesus has prepared for her, finally coming home.

For believers that mourn the loss of another believer we love, it can truly be a comfort to know that not only are they home, but someday we can be home with them again.

heaven's open!

So I was too busy getting ready for the opening of Visions of Heaven at the Artisan Gallery to get around to updating this blog last week, but I'll make up for it by posting photos from Saturday night and then I'll catch up with more art that is up on those walls right now. Remember that if you want to see any of these images larger, just click on it.

This shot shows the back end of the gallery, you can see one of Dave Kiesewetter's pieces, several of Ross Conklin's and Vincent Dixon's painting on the curvy wall. My sculptural work is on the pedastal.

Another view of the gallery shows Sandy Thornton's painting next to several of Karen Fields' small works - and the door leading into Cafe' Refugio.

Looking back toward the front of the gallery you can see Eileen Downes' pieces, large and small, and another of Ross Conklin's paintings.

And here's the front door of the gallery, Ross has another painting here, and you can see a grouping of my photographic works here as well.

Farther along that same wall, are a few more of my photographic works, and a couple artists waiting for their throngs of visitors. During the reception, I made an effort to capture each of the showing artists by their work:

Dave and Pam Kiesewetter

Eileen Downes

Jared Konopitski

Karen Fields

Ross Conklin

Sandy Wenell Thornton

Sheila Stockton

Vincent Dixon

Our cool live music, Karmada

Judith and Scott Monroe

"little doodle" from jared

Though Jared has been done with this for some time, I am just now getting this posted. Jared's personal vision of heaven no doubt varies from what many would consider traditional, but it is always thought provoking and interesting work. This particular colored pencil work requires more than a cursory glance to take it in, since our eye is not drawn to what is most important in the piece, but that is entirely appropriate in this particular case.

The scripture that inspired Jared to create this is 1 Corinthians 15:25-26. "For Christ must reign until he humbles all his enemies beneath his feet. And the last enemy to be destroyed is death." Jared simply says, "This little doodle illustrates Christ humbling an enemy beneath His feet." What draws the eye in this work is what draws our eyes in this world most naturally as well, the enemies of Christ. Whether it's tempting lusts or frightening problems, our eyes so often are drawn away from the One who will crush it all beneath his feet, by the power of his death on the cross, which Jared illustrates in this work. Only by conscious effort do we see the naked foot in the pool of his own blood, the only way we will be admitted to heaven where Christ will eternally reign.

heaven is filled with trees

As the gallery show draws near, much is coming together, and there seems to be trees sprouting up everywhere. I have a couple of my own to share later, but today it's another tree of life from bead artist Sheila Stockton (hi Mom!) This is her "Tree of Life #5" which is depicted this time as a cherry tree. Once again, her inspiration for the series is Revelation 22:2, this time in the Contemporary English Version, "On each side of the river are trees that grow a different kind of fruit each month of the year. The fruit gives life, and the leaves are used as medicine to heal the nations."

peeking through heaven's door

Today we'll take another look at the doorway to heaven, this time through the eyes of Eileen Downes, who uses peices of paper to 'paint' with -

I have always been fascinated by doors, windows, portals, passageways and their symbolic meaning. I have saved such imagery for many years - photos from vacations, magazines, family member’s trips, my own illustrations etc... anything about doors really. I have used some of these fragments in the previous collages by layering them over each other, often intertwining them, into an artistic arrangement. Glimpses and views of wonderfully beautiful places symbolic of heaven can be seen though the doorways and windows. These pieces are complete art pieces in their own right, but they are also preparatory illustrations to the larger piece that I recently completed.

This large piece incorporates a real antique door that the viewer must actually open to reveal the imagery behind. This interactive art piece asks the viewer to make a motion, a decision to open, just like we are asked to make a motion to accept Christ as our Savior.

Doors and windows are symbolic imagery that I use in these pieces to convey the essence of heaven. We can pass though these portals of life like we pass from this world into our eternal life in heaven. The Bible references doors in several verses. For example:

Psalm 78:23 "Yet he gave a command to the skies above and opened the doors of the heavens."

Revelation 4:1 "After this I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, 'Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.'"

Genesis 28:17 "He was afraid and said, 'How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.'"

Although the following verse does not specifically mention “doors” it does so indirectly by indicating that there are many rooms in heaven: John 14:2 "In my Fathers house are many rooms; and if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you."


- Eileen Downes

doorway to heaven

Today we have a contribution from an artist you haven't heard from before, David Kiesewetter. Dave is still experimenting with different media, trying to find one that really suits him, as many of us do before we settle into one or two primary media. (Unless we just decide to mix them all up!) This piece is a wonderful pen and ink drawing, part of Dave's process for a larger work, but strong enough to stand on it's own as well.

Dave's inspiration for this piece, comes from Revelation 4:1, "After this I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, 'Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.'"

Here we see the door open to show a glimpse into heaven beyond, including some of the twenty-four elders sitting around the central throne of God, referred to in Revelation 4:4. In the foreground, you can see the water of the river of life, that flows out from the throne of God, as found in Revelation 22:1.

As we prepare for Thanksgiving tomorrow, I thank God that he is preparing this wonderful place to share with us. Blessings to all.

process and the river of life

Today I'm going to take you through the process for one of my mixed media photographs, "River of Life." I'll actually show you the step by step process I've gone through in my artist's journal I've been keeping just for this project.

The first step was reading through the book "In Light of Eternity" by Randy Alcorn and looking up all the scriptural references that he cites in his book. This has been the basis for all of the artwork done by all of the artists over the course of this past year. There were actually a couple of pieces of scripture that inspired this particular piece. First, in Revelation 22:1, it says, "Then the angel showed me a river with the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb."


One of the first things this scripture does is make me think of what river images I might already have, like this photo taken for no particular reason at the time but has been patiently waiting for me to print it. I made a digital copy to color and put in my journal, waiting for the next piece of the work to come together. You can see I also doodled some palm trees onto it, to see how I'd like to work in the palm tree element that I want to keep as a theme in this project.


Another verse helped influence this piece, Genesis 2:10-14, "A river watered the garden and then flowed out of Eden and divided into four branches. The first branch, called the Pishon, flowed around the entire land of Havilah, where gold is found... The second branch, called the Gihon, flowed around the entire land of Cush. The third branch, called the Tigris, flowed east of the land of Asshur. The fourth branch is called the Euphrates." I really like the link between maps of a place and the image of the place, and I've used maps for overlays before this project, so it wasn't a great stretch for me to think of a map of Eden's rivers to connect the River of Life in Heaven and the river that fed the whole earth from Eden, possibly even the same river? The thought intrigues me that there is a close link between Eden, referred to as Paradise in the Bible, and Heaven, also referred to as Paradise...


In my journal, I can overlap the photographic image and the map, to work out how the two will fit together in the darkroom, change it if I want to, mull it over, move it, or change it completely.


This is the black and white contact print, with the map and a single palm tree as an overlay. When you look at this image and the next one, you can see that the overlay can move around, making no two in the series exactly alike.


Finally, I use watercolors, then dry colored pencils to add the final dimension of color to the piece. In this case, I decided to make the sky yellow in a reference to God's light in Heaven, eliminating the need for the sun or moon, but not necessarily eliminating the sun & the moon themselves, as found in Revelation 22:5. "And there will be no night there - no need for lamps or sun - for the Lord God will shine on them."

So that takes you from beginning to end in the process. By the way, the first entry for this in my journal is dated February 2007, and I just finished it November 2007: about nine months, so I guess it's appropriate for me to think of the finished piece as one of my babies.

heaven opened

Today I have another image from Jared Konopitski, our colored pencil stylist, with an awe inspired piece from Revelation 19:11-16: "Then I saw heaven opened, and a white horse was standing there. And the one sitting on the horse was named Faithful and True. For he judges fairly and then goes to war. His eyes were bright flames of fire, and on his head were many crowns. A name was written on him, and only he knew what it meant. He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and his title was the Word of God. The armies of heaven followed him on white horses. From his mouth came a sharp sword, and with it he struck down the nations. He ruled them with an iron rod, and he trod the winepress of the fierce wrath of the almighty God. On his robe and thigh was written this title: King of kings and Lord of lords."

Jared has called this "My simplistic drawing of such a complicated image," but I would say he has distilled the image to something that we can grasp, and that he has done it very well. When I start to look at the image and read the passage, I see many things that I wouldn't grasp in the reading alone. I'm afraid that I'm such a visually oriented person, that it would take many careful readings for me to "see" the image in my head, yet Jared gives me the whole picture at once. It's not so simple that it doesn't takes time for me to grasp the whole picture, but it begins to help bring the scripture to life for me.

At first I felt that the relaxed pose of the rider and horse was incongrous to the sword and flame features of Christ, but it helped remind me this is the same Christ who humbly rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, then gave his life for us to share in his glory. And that is what heaven being opened to us is all about...

tree of life #4

Today we're bringing you the next piece in Sheila Stockton's beaded embroidery series, "Tree of Life #4." Her scriptural inspiration comes from Revelation 22:2, "Through the middle of the broadway of the city; also, on either side of the river was the tree of life with its twelve varieties of fruit, yielding each month its fresh crop; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing and the restoration of the nations." (Amplified) You can see that this time she chose to depict an apple tree, which has so often been how the tree of life in the garden of Eden has been depicted in western tradition.

If you would like to see the rest of her series, you can click on "Sheila Stockton" at the bottom of this post. You'll get a new page with all the posts that have that label on them, which will be all of her series for this project. Also remember that to see most images in this blog larger, just click on the image itself.

river of healing revisted

This is a pair of images I first showed some time ago as they appear in my journal, and now they're finally finished. They form a diptych, or two images that are considered one piece, and they actually have elements that run from one image to the next.





They were inspired by Ezekiel 47:7 & 9, "When I returned, I was surprised by the sight of many trees growing on both sides of the river... There will be swarms of living things wherever the water of this river flows... Life will flourish wherever this water flows." All this from a vision Ezekiel was having of heaven. Of course, we are also told about the river of life in heaven in Revelation 22:2, "It flowed down the center of the main street. On each side of the river grew a tree of life... the leaves were used for medicine to heal the nations." So the vision of John is different but certainly has commonalities with Ezekiel's vision.

The overlay images I used for this piece are actually maps of the rivers that flowed around Eden, or at least an interpretation of where they could have been, since Eden's exact location was lost to us when Adam & Eve sinned. It's thrilling to think that Paradise lost will become Paradise restored when Heaven is at last brought down to earth, which is what the maps signify in this piece.

I've continued that concept in the next piece I've finished, which I'll try to post tomorrow.

a warning & reminder

"You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone adorned you: ruby, topaz and emerald, chrysolite, onyx and jasper, sapphire, turquiose and beryl. Your setting and mounting were made of gold; on the day you were created they were prepared. You were annointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you. You were on the holy mount of God; you walked among the fiery stones. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created fill wickedness was found in you. Through your widespread trade you were filled with violence and you sinned. So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God, I expelled you, O guardian cherub, from among the fiery stones. Your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor. So I threw you to the earth; I made you a spectacle of you before kings." Ezekiel 28: 14-16

This is the scene, set in Eden and heaven, that describes Satan being thrown out of heaven, giving us some background and understanding for Jared Konopitski's piece, "The Devil's Trickery", inspired by 2 Corinthians 11:14, which says, "Even Satan can disguise himself as an 'angel of light.'"

While this piece isn't strictly a vision of heaven, it certainly peeks into the workings of heaven and the invisible spiritual realm. Jared describes this colored pencil work as "more of warning and a reminder. Sometimes what seems like heaven may just be a devilish trick." Jared also reminds us to make sure things agree with scripture before taking it as heaven sent. While the message could be sent harshly, Jared's style softens the blow and makes this an approachable subject - even allowing us to laugh a little - yet maintains a somewhat sinister edge in his depiction of Satan.

Wait until you see what he has up his sleeve next - I mean Jared, not Satan -

more trees

Today we go back to trees - another tree of life in bead embroidery by Sheila Stockton - and watching how a beaded tree grows from the seeds of inspiration to the full growth of a finished product. The first part of inspiration comes from scripture, in this case, Sheila says, "since olive trees are such long living trees:"

They’ll build houses
and move in.
They’ll plant fields
and eat what they grow.
No more building a house
that some outsider takes over,
No more planting fields
that some enemy confiscates,
For my people will be as long-lived as trees,
my chosen ones will have satisfaction in their work.
Isaiah 65:16-17* (The Message)

Here you can see the seed growing into a colored pencil sketch in Sheila's journal and below it in the body of text is another scriptural reference to the tree of life in Revelation 22:2, "On each side of the river grew the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit with a fresh crop each month." Some translations specify that each fruit is a different kind of fruit, and this reference to twelve kinds of fruit is part of what has inspired Sheila to render the tree of life as different fruit bearing trees. We'll wait to see if she gets to twelve...







At this stage, you can see the pencil sketch on the cloth (including some color reference) and the embroidery in progress. We happened to catch it at a point where she had just finished a length of thread and had tied it off in the back, otherwise, you might see the very fine needle that she works with.

And finally the finished piece - I think this whole process took her about week, not counting the conceptual process and the many hours of searching for just the right beads for the work.


*On a scriptural note, the verse she chose to accompany this piece, is from a section of Isaiah specifically referring to the New Earth, when Jesus will be back on earth with his people, bringing Heaven down and restoring God's relationship to humankind.

contrasting heaven & earth

Today we've got another piece from Jared Konopitski, whose visions are unlike any others. This image is called "Out of Tears" and is in Jared's signature colored pencil style, digitally enlarged to poster size creations.

His inspiration for this image comes from Luke 6:21, where Jesus said those on earth will laugh in heaven, as well as from Mathew 18:3, where He said, "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."

Jared describes the piece as illustrating "a child being birthed into heaven out of a world of tears." He made the contrast of laughing in heaven to crying (tears) on earth; much like some passages of scripture do (though I can't at the moment remember where.) We all can acknowledge that life on earth in the here and now can be a very painful experience and this work is a reminder that all of that pain will no longer exist when we live in the presence of God. Praise Him for that!

trees of life

Many of you are aware of my own personal facination with trees, and the tree of life has to be one of the most facinating concepts for me personally, but it has also been the subject of many artists and iconographers quite literally over the millenia.

In our western society, the tree of life is an apple tree; I've never researched why that happens to be (maybe I should) but I have researched some of the Hebrew tradtitions and found that some hold the tree of life as a date palm, an olive tree, a fig tree, or even a grape vine. For an artist deciding to depict this most heavenly of trees, the options are wide open.

One artist embarking on this journey is Sheila Stockton (many of you also know her as my mother) who is using bead embroidery as her media of choice for this journey.

This is her second finished work, titled "Tree of Life #2: Date Palm." Her scriptural reference for this piece is "Blessed are those who wash their robes. They will be permitted to enter through the gates of the city and eat the fruit from the tree of life." (Revelation 22:14 NLT) You can see the river of life in this image, and the date palm tree of life growing along both sides of the river.

The detail work in these tiny artistic jewels is pretty impressive. (You can click on the image itself to get a closer view of those details.) We'll share a little more of the process that goes into those details in another post very soon...

And just so you know how these things work, if you'd like to see more artwork that relates to the work in this posting, just click on one of the labels at the bottom of the post and see what happens!

time for refreshments!

And finally, the notes for my last New Jerusalm Palms image, "Times of Refreshment." This inspiration for this piece comes from Acts 3:20-21. "Then times of refreshment will come from the presence of the Lord, and he will again send you Jesus, your appointed Messiah. For he must remain in heaven until the time for the final restoration of all things, as God promised long ago through his holy prophets."



Here's the whole page with overlays in my journal - you can see the scriptural reference noted to the right -



Here's the map overlay by itself, again a map of ancient Jerusalem. I really like the idea of the old Jerusalm connecting with the New Jerusalem, illustrating God's timelessness in his city.



And finally the palm image by itself. Of course, I ended up painting them somewhat differently, but that just shows that the creative process can take twists & turns...

heaven in the studio

This is actually my entry for today on my personal art blog, which you can find at www.judithmonroe.com/journal.html, but it's about my work for this heaven project, so I figured I'd just post it here, too:

More studio work today - and last night -



Wet watercolors on the New Jerusalem Palms mini series (and here you thought that was only on tv.)



This morning, I was working on two things at once - actually alternately, but saying at once is more impressive - in the foreground you can see the new Polaroid transfer wall art plaques I'm working on for a couple venues and back on my drawing table I'm doing the pencil work on the New Jerusalem Palms quartet.

By noon I've already finished the New Jerualem Palms, so I'll share...

My Father's House 1/5

Heavenly Homeland 1/5

City of God 1/5

Times of Refreshment 1/5

dad's house

I spent a couple hours in the darkroom today, printing what I'm now calling my New Jerusalem Palms series. I've shared my journal pages of two of the four pieces already, so I'll share another today, then the uncolored prints (which are drying right now) and finally the finished pieces.


This is the page complete with overlay and miscellaneous notes. The Scripture I'm basing this image on is John 14:1-3, "Don't let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. There is more than enough room in my Father's home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am."


My first thought coming from this verse was of a long driveway lined with palms leading to a grand house, like can be found here in the Central Valley. Actually finding what I had in my head proved to be a challenge, and in looking for palms for other images in this series, I found my rows of palms and then thought I could overlay a small image of a home, or an architectural sketch but then realized I already had found an image of a mosaic map of ancient Jerusalem which portrayed buildings, bringing to my mind the idea of a home with many rooms, almost like a city...


So I created an overlay based on the mosaic to use with the palm trees and also create another visual reference to Jerusalem. Of course, the images never work out quite the same in the darkroom as they do in my journal. In this case, the image of the palms was too busy when the overlay was completely over it, but I like the effect on the wide black border around the image, so I cut a hole in the overlay to allow the palms to come through more readable.

It's really exciting for me to have all the pieces come together after messing around with them. This whole conceptual process is new to me, but I'm finding it rewarding in a whole new way.