Lessons From Art

Last year I was asked to give a testimony in my church Bible study about what God had been doing in my life. I was terrified, since I would much rather hide behind a computer screen than speak in front of a group of people. It probably wasn't the most amazingly delivered testimony ever, but I have thought about posting my notes on here for a while and I guess I'm actually doing it today. It's long, so I don't really expect anyone to read it. In fact if you've gotten this far I'm impressed.

Lessons From Art

November 2018

I’ve been working on a painting the past couple weeks and it seems like it’s taken forever. My mom said that it’s like I’ve created a new painting every day because I keep covering over the previous layer. But I’m not just erasing everything I’ve done each time. I’ve learned that a good painting comes from building up layers. Some of them don’t look at all like what I’m going for in the end, but they all play a part in building up the kind of depth I need for the final product to look right.

Since we moved back to North Carolina four years ago, we’ve gone through season after season where things just don’t seem to make sense. There have been times during some of the trials we’ve faced where I just couldn’t understand what, if anything, God was doing. The layers he was painting in my life didn’t look right to me and it felt like he was constantly erasing anything close to order and painting over it again with something new that I didn’t understand. Doubt has been a struggle in the past four years more than any time in my life, and I’ve felt many times like I just didn’t have the strength to trust God.

Over the past year, though, God has used something in my life that I thought I had lost a long time ago to speak to me about Him. He has used art to remind me that He is doing something purposeful with our lives. It may feel like everything is a mess, but He knows the final product that He is creating, and even if it just seems like He is covering up one mess with another, He knows how to tie together the layers of our lives to create in us the finished product that He wants.

Philippians 1:6

"And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ."

Three years ago this month my half brothers’ father died suddenly and my brothers were trying to find a good picture of them together. All we could find was a very grainy cell phone photo. I got the idea of taking that picture and doing a drawing of them. I hadn’t done anything like that in over ten years.

When I was a kid I dreamed of being an artist and I had always planned on going to college for art. But near the end of high school I got discouraged because I didn’t feel like my abilities had progressed over my three years of taking classes, and that if God had meant that to be an artist He would have made a way. I ended up at a different college with a different major and a completely different experience than I would have had. I met my husband and went on with life.

Despite this, there were always two people who encouraged me not to forget art. One was my best friend Emily’s aunt, who I called Aunt Cindy because she seemed like a family member to me. She was very creative and treated me like I was too. She could paint and sew and seemingly make anything. She was always making gifts for people and using her talents to bless others. She stretched a giant canvas for me when I was in high school and always asked me if I was working on something.

The other person was my Uncle Charlie. His mother was an artist, and he always seemed to “get” me in my non-artsy family. He taught me to play guitar when I was in high school and I would spend hours learning whatever he would show me. He would always ask me if I had been drawing even though my answer was “no” for over ten years after high school. When I did the drawing of my brothers and their dad, he told me that I had improved and encouraged me yet again to pursue doing something with my art, but I was too self-conscious and didn’t even really feel qualified to call myself an artist. But I did start to draw some again every once in a while.

This past February Aunt Cindy passed away after battling an illness for several months. Later that month Uncle Charlie went to the doctor with some concerns, and found out he had stage four lung cancer. After Aunt Cindy passed away and Uncle Charlie got his diagnosis, I started drawing, painting, and writing a lot. It was a way to cope with the grief and helplessness I felt, but it was also a way to honor Aunt Cindy’s memory and Uncle Charlie’s influence. Aunt Cindy’s life was marked by kindness and sharing her creative talents with others, and I felt like I owed it to her to take the beauty she had brought to my life and share that with others. With the time I still had left with my uncle, I wanted to show him that his encouragement and wisdom had made a difference in my life. So I started to do the things he had encouraged me to do for years, like calling myself an artist and trying to sell my work. I knew that meant a lot to him because one of the things he loved to do most in life was to mentor people and see them thrive. I got to follow a lot of his advice and tell him about it before he passed away this past August.

I also got to witness his unflinching devotion to Christ throughout his illness, all the way until the last time I saw him two days before he passed away. I could spend this entire evening talking about his testimony and what it has meant to me and many others, but I’ll stick to the topic of art. The thing I didn't get to tell Uncle Charlie, that he would have especially loved, is that in the midst of rediscovering art, I didn’t just get to enjoy a hobby again. That was what I thought at first, that God was giving me back a hobby I loved at a time when I needed it to cope with life. But really, He was using art to teach me about Himself.

I thought I would share five things I’ve learned over the past year through rediscovering art:

1) God puts creativity into the heart of the artist:

Exodus 28:3

"You shall speak to all the skillful, whom I have filled with a spirit of skill, that they make Aaron's garments to consecrate him for my priesthood."

That part “whom I have filled with a spirit of skill” tells me that creativity and skill comes from God. This may not sound earth-shattering, but it is comforting to me. A lot of Christian artists struggle with whether producing art is pleasing to God or whether it is selfish and self-indulgent. We struggle with whether it should have a place in our lives or whether it is sinful to spend our time making art instead of being involved with more practical acts of service.

2) God means for creativity to be used in service to God’s community, and in mentoring other artists:

Exodus 35: 30 - 35

"Then Moses said to the people of Israel, “See, the LORD has called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah; and he has filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, with intelligence, with knowledge, and with all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold and silver and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, for work in every skilled craft. And he has inspired him to teach, both him and Oholiab the son of Ahisamach of the tribe of Dan. He has filled them with skill to do every sort of work done by an engraver or by a designer or by an embroiderer in blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twined linen, or by a weaver—by any sort of workman or skilled designer."

These verses from Exodus, which hit me when we studied it last semester, helped re-orient my thinking so that I could see artistic skill as a valid gift from God and one to be used in His service and for His glory. It also gives me a burden for other artists in the Christian community who have this same struggle.

In ancient times, art was used to celebrate the beautiful. It was used in both Christian and pagan societies as a service to the community for the greater good. In Christendom it was seen as worship and a high calling, but that has changed a lot with the dawn of modern art. After the Impressionists broke from the rules that had previously governed the fine art world, they opened the door for artists like Pablo Picasso to throw out the rules altogether. The new leaders of the art world redefined its purpose and art became about the artist, his whims and grudges, and for many all but lost the image of God that so many earlier artists had longed to somehow capture in their work. It is often hard for a Christian who loves art to know their place in the art world and Christian artists need other Christian artists to mentor and encourage them in their attempts to bring glory to God through their art.

3) I am flawed and everything I make is flawed, but God is perfect and His purposes will be accomplished:

When I put my paintbrush to canvas or my pencil to paper I think, “I hope something halfway decent comes out of this.” It’s a surprisingly common experience or artists to fear a blank canvas or a blank page every time. I often feel surprised that I “pulled off” the last piece, and unsure if I’ll ever be able to do something like that again. I know it will take a lot of work and there are no guarantees that it will be any good. In contrast, all God has to do is speak and perfection comes into existence. How much better are his plans than mine? If He is the artist who is working on our lives, we don’t have to fear that he is going to get it wrong.

Isaiah 46: 5-10

“To whom will you liken me and make my equal, and compare me, that we may be alike? Those who lavish gold from the purse, and weigh out silver in the scales, hire a goldsmith, and he makes it into a god; then they fall down and worship! They lift it to their shoulders, they carry it, they set it in its place, and it stands there; it cannot move from its place. If one cries to it, it does not answer or save him from his trouble. “Remember this and stand firm, recall it to mind, you transgressors, remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose,’"

4) Art tells me that I am limited, but I serve an unlimited God:

There is a lot of talk in the art world about finding your “style.” Some people believe your chief goal as an art student is to identify your specific style. Another school of thought says that you should focus on learning the fundamentals and improving the quality of your work, and that your work will naturally have a style of its own that reflects you. I tend to agree with that theory. All of my art looks like it was done by me, even the pieces that I thought were really experimental or totally different from my normal style. I can’t get away from my own style no matter how hard I try. I am very limited.

But God is infinitely creative. If another artist created a drawing from one of the photographs I used to create one of mine, his would look extremely different. Both drawings may look exactly like the scene in the photograph, but nothing like each other. I am only able to make art that looks like my art, but God is able to make different people who have completely unique ways of seeing, who make unique pieces of art. He not only creates diversity in how people look, but also in what their creations look like. He is infinitely creative and all our individual creativity comes from Him.

Colossians 1: 15-16

"He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him."

5) God knows the bigger picture:

My husband and I went to the Biltmore with some friends this spring and I loved seeing all the paintings and etchings in their collection. What I didn't expect was how much I enjoyed the tapestry gallery. There were three intricately woven tapestries from a set called “The Triumph of the Seven Virtues.” They were made in the early 1500s and they depict Bible Stories that illustrate each virtue. Brilliant gold and blue and red threads are woven together in exactly the right places to make stunning figures and illustrate the truths of God’s word in an incredibly powerful way.

I can’t imagine being able to dream up those scenes and then actually accomplish them with thread. I don’t sew at all. Those pieces leave me in wonder and awe, for that artist and for God. If that artist knew how to weave those threads together in such an amazing way to build that picture, how much more must God know how to weave each of our lives into the fabric of time for just the right length and in just the right place to make His masterpiece come to life. That image has helped me a lot when I am missing my uncle and am tempted to think that his life was cut short. It helps me to remember that there is a much bigger picture in the midst of heartache than what I can see with my limited perspective as a thread in a giant tapestry. He knows all He has purposed for us as well as all He has purposed for all of mankind.

Ephesians 2:10

"We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."

Psalm 139:13 - 16

"For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them."

Throughout our studies of Genesis and Exodus, God is the Master Artist. He took a formless and void wasteland and filled it with beauty and life. He created clothing to hide man’s shame. He designed a ship to save mankind from complete ruin and used water to clear the canvas of the earth and start His creation afresh. He creates us in our mother’s womb, He re-creates us when we are born again into Christ Jesus, and then He is faithful to continue His work in us until we are one day complete.

Revelation 15:3 - 4

“And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, “Great and amazing are your deeds, O Lord God the Almighty! Just and true are your ways, O King of the nations! Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship you, for your righteous acts have been revealed.”