solid rock

I'll be trying to incorporate more artworks from our various artists again - as long as they all keep me supplied with work! Today I'll catch up on a piece that's been hanging in the "Upper Room" at First Covenant, an acrylic painting by Ross Conklin.









This piece is titled "Solid Rock" and serves as an illustration for the common Biblical reference to God as our rock, the one steady constant in our lives. (You can click on the image to enlarge it.)

As Ross puts it, "The constant sea billows roll and pound as the Solid Rock stands fast. The rock represents God's strength as the rock of our salvation stands firm. The surging sea represents the push and pull of this world (the devil) who threatens to tear us down." Ross also shares a list of scriptural reference to God as our rock.

In Deuteronomy 32:4, "He is our rock. His works are perfect." In Second Samuel 22:2, "The Lord is my rock and fortress." King David repeatedly referred to God as his rock in difficult times. In Psalm 18:2, he says, "The Lord is my rock and fortress." Again in Psalm 19:14 he proclaims, "The Lord is my rock and redeemer." And once more in Psalm 61:2 he pleads, "as my heart grows faint; Lead me to the Rock that is higher than I." Isaiah also proclaims, "The Lord is my Rock eternal." (26:4) I'm sure that's not an exhaustive list of references to God as our rock, but I think it gets the message across. Need something solid in your life? God's your guy.

breathing in: finding inspiration

Our Creative Call study meets this evening; we'll be reviewing Chapter 5, "Breathing In." In this chapter author Janice Elsheimer covers the subject of inspiration and the Holy Spirit as the source of that inspiration.

I wanted to expand on a thought she puts under the heading "The Courage to Create... This week, try to focus on two main ideas:

1. paying attention
2. making time to breathe in the inspiration God offers you"

A good tool to help you get into the paying attention mode is to sit down with an observational checklist, which I use when I teach about art journaling with students. Inside the front or back cover of your sketchbook/journal, write down this list, then refer to it when you feel you must be missing something. Remember to listen as well as to look, sometimes we visual artists can forget to listen...

1. date
2. time
3. location
4. weather - include wind direction, cloud formations, the forecast for the day
5. first impressions
6. ground observations - really get down there & see what there, especially interesting if you're outside
7. eye-level observations - what is there just at your eye level?
8. overhead observations - spend some time looking up, we often ignore what's over our heads
9. whole landscape observations

This is something I do myself as an integral part of my creative process, I find it helps me focus on my work and what I'm seeing. It also gives me something to reflect back on during later parts of the creative process. (I've adapted this list from another great book, "Keeping a Nature Journal.")

Want to read what's on those journal pages? Just click on the image to see it enlarged!

grape vine "tree" updated

I recently got an email asking about the "vine tree" and I wanted to clarify some things about that, as well as share a "vine tree" image of my own. What I'm referring to isn't actually a tree, but a grape vine, as a botanical possibility of the tree of life.

There's alot more on the whole matter in the context of Jewish culture at Nehi's Tree of Life.



This is a new image of mine, not specifically intended to reflect an aspect of heaven, but does anyway, as my work usually does. Some time ago, I realized that all of my work illustrates my longing to be in perfect communion with God, like Adam and Eve had in the garden.

Sometimes when I'm working, especially shooting out in some quiet place all alone, I can almost be in that state, but it can be a hard thing for us to do now when we're on this currently imperfect earth. That's when I long for heaven to be brought down and the earth remade into something the same but more wonderful - and that's what always seems to come through in my work - at least when I've done it right...

creative journaling

Last week we had another Creative Call journaling exercise - this time a collage prayer. We found words and images in magazines, then collaged them together in our journals as a prayer, asking God for the things we need, thanking him for what he's given us, whatever we needed to talk to him about. We didn't worry about whether it made sense to anyone else, because we know that God knows. I'm sharing my collage prayer here, so that you can get the idea and try one of your own - a nice way to journal, I think.

To see this image larger, just click on it, then click your back button to get back to this post - As for what some of this means, the big frame is around the whole thing; I want my life to be God's work of art, so I'm framing this prayer to express that. The word nature and natural images are references to the inspiration I have for much of my work, which I am so thankful for. I need from God his guidance daily for my own artistic growth which is so rewarding to me - and I always want to be sending God's message of love. Down below is the word studio - I'll be renting new studio space soon, which God will have to bless financially or I won't be able to do it very long, so that's a big request right now.

All these things were on my collage but it was missing something, and I didn't know what, so I was looking through one of my art magazines and found the quote, "You've got to touch people. That's why you create art." That pretty much sums it all up. Amen

more heaven showing

Since many of the artworks that were shown at the Artisan Gallery were never shown at First Cov, we decided to have a reprise of the Heaven Show in the Upper Room and the Cafe - in stages. Currently showing are works by Ross Conklin (work in first photo), Jared Konopitski (work in next photo), David Kiesewetter and Vincent Dixon. Apparently my brain was out to lunch when I took photos Sunday morning - I'll have to take more to showcase Dave & Vincent's work!
At least I managed to capture a nice still life in the Cafe'...

cov arts workshop goes to high school

This week I had the pleasure of bringing a Cov Artist's journal-making work-shop to a group of high school girls - whether they knew it or not - a good time was had by all...

creative journal help

Since we are currently working our way as a group through The Creative Call by Janice Elsheimer, I thought I would use this blog as a tool to help out. As a visual artist going through this book for the third time, I was struck at how writer-oriented her exercises are, which is a good way to get some creative juices flowing, but I know so many visual artists who are put off or freaked out by writing that this gets in the way of the study.




So now that we're in Chapter 3, I'll start adding my own suggestions as to how to work out these exercises. Specifically, for Exercise 1: Visions and Longings, Janice asks us to remember the things we loved to do as a child and list as many of these things as we can in five minutes - finding our way back to our inner child, as it were. I'd challenge you to go a step further and then create a collage from magazine images, or to sketch out images, find old photos, whatever, that takes you back to these same activities.

One of my all time favorite things is time at the beach, sitting and playing in the sand as a child, making roads and castles, finding seashell treasures, running in the waves. And then later photographing at the beach, including my own children engaging in these very same activities.

Make this your creative journaling time today - and just try to keep it to only twenty minutes... ;)