Artist

A Year of Creating Dangerously, Day 361: Ron’s 2017 Gallery, part 1

Self Portrait, Chagall-style

My 2017 of daily creative exploration is almost at an end. Frankly, I can hardly believe it. I set out on January 1, 2017 with the goal of posting in this blog each day, hoping to offset the negativity in the world and in my own spirit with art and artists and various expressions of creativity. Along the way I have discovered so many things, been inspired, and in many ways rewired my own brain to better take in all the good things around me. I also found the time to do a lot of art, perhaps more than I have ever done since I graduated from college with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree back when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

Over the next three days, I’ve decided to use this space as a sort of gallery. Though I am not very good at exact dating of things, I will attempt to show you examples of my artwork from this year, semi-chronologically. It was a year that I thought would involve more painting but, as it turned out, I did a lot more “painting” with craft foam, burlap and Modge Podge in the form of some mosaics. It was also a year where I tried to push myself into new directions and challenge my own established way of viewing and things.

Without further ado, here is part one of my 2017 Gallery:

Punk Rock Warlord (Joe Strummer Vs The Void)

Punk Rock Warlord (Joe Strummer Vs. the Void), Mixed media on canvas, 2016

Technically, this painting of Joe Strummer was finished right at the end of 2016 (I think on December 30 or 31, to be exact). However, it was done in the spirit that led me to my Year of Creating Dangerously, so I include it here as a very important jumping-off point for me.

Joe is a great hero of mine because of his own spirit and willingness to put himself out there in a vulnerable but powerful way. Instead of a traditional portrait, I chose to picture him battling the forces of brutality and banality (what I called the Void) with his chosen weapons: his voice, his words and his guitar slung around his neck. I intended it to just be an acrylic painting but the addition of shredded newspaper with Joe’s lyrics on them became a harbinger of things to come for me in 2017.

I had a difficult time completely shaking my disgust at the political reality in the world at the beginning of 2017, particularly as it played out south of the border. That led me to creating this next piece that appeared on my blog on inauguration day:

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Divisible, Mixed media on canvas, 2017

My roots are in the United States so I couldn’t help but be distressed watching my former country from my vantage point in Canada. I had drawn a number of expressionist-type American flags with oil pastels. I tore those up to create this collage, Old Glory shattered and in disarray. It was very cathartic for me to make this artwork which I called “Divisible” as a counter-point to the “Indivisible” claim of the Pledge of Allegiance I used to give before the start of my school days.

About three years ago when I was getting back into art, I tried to recreate some famous portraits using oil pastels. It was a way to train myself and fire up the creative Jones again. This year, I decided to created my own self-portraits but in the style of a famous artist. I ended up finishing four of them which I share below, side-by-side with the original:

 

Self-portrait Klee style, Chalk Pastels, 2017

 

 

 

In descending order, then, is Paul Klee, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro and Marc Chagall. I confess to having a lot of fun with these, particularly the Chagall-style self portrait as, just like the original, I added autobiographical details to the picture (e.g., Colorado in the dream bubble, a church and a bit of Spider Man on the canvas, Ottawa’s parliament hill out the window). These portraits were really great at getting me to think color and form and help me see things with a different set of eyes.

I had marvelous intentions from the beginning of the year to create a painting per month in 2017 dedicated to a favorite artist of mine. I ended up making three, none as pure paintings. The one below was finished in February, 2017:

Maya Rising

Maya Rising, Mixed media on canvas, 2017

Maya Angelou is a great inspiration to me. This work was completed with a combination of black markers and acrylic paint, over photocopied sheets from her book I know Why the Caged Bird Sings, along with the words to her poem “Still I Rise”.

I have done many portraits of people – my co-workers, some friends, and some famous folks but I have avoided drawing my family. Frankly, that scares me the most and I think I get frozen up worried about getting them right. Below is my attempt at drawing my daughter from a beautiful photo of her when she was about four or five years old:

Picking Dandelions

Picking Dandelions, Oil Pastels on paper, 2017

I ended up with something very impressionistic but I was still very dissatisfied with it. Why? Because I didn’t think it looked like my daughter!  I have come to appreciate it more over the course of the year but am bound and determined to get her right sometime in the near future.

Because this year was about creativity to me, I spent a lot of time researching different artists. At times that would lead me to attempting to recreate something they had done to stretch myself in new artistic directions. Jean Arp was a Dadaist who created some works by dropping geometric shapes onto a canvas. I tried the same thing with bits of craft foam dropped onto sheets of construction paper. The results are below:

 

Little did I know that this seemingly simple artistic lark would lead me down the road to mosaics. These geometric patterns led me to thinking about stained-glass types of artwork, with shapes bound by black lines. I started experimenting with images having to do with the crucifixion (we were nearing Good Friday and Easter) and I came up with these small paintings on paper:

 

I was trying to stretch myself again, thinking expressionist lines, solid colors, geometric shapes, and unusual glimpses of a familiar subject. From these ideas flowed the idea for a large painting, one of the few pure acrylic paintings I did this year, and the idea for a large cross to be on display at my church for Easter Sunday. Below is the painting, posted on Good Friday, and below that is me with the Easter Cross. Note the continued use of geometric shapes and solid colors:

Crucifixion Coronation

Crucifixion Coronation, Acrylic on canvas, 2017

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There was a wonderful coming-together of ideas and imagination at this time of the year for me. I was beginning to see the possibilities in this art form. As I have time in my day where I am part of running an art studio, I found I was often experimenting with things, trying things out. I found some leftover craft foam in our stores and used it to create a quick self portrait on paper:

Self portrait in craft foam 2017

Little did I know that just four months into this year I discovered the style that would define my art for 2017 more than any other. I was turning into a mosaic-maker.

Tomorrow in part 2 I’ll put a few of those artworks on display in this blog gallery.

 

 

 

 

A Year of Creating Dangerously, Day 108: Planned Randomness

Planned Randomness: It’s a thing! Or, if it isn’t a thing, it should be a thing. Certainly, I am beginning to see that Planned Randomness is my thing.

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As I was putting the colored shapes onto the Easter cross I made for the weekend, the thought occurred to me that much of the look of the cross came from a sort of planned randomness; that is, I had a plan in mind – in this case, the large pieces of white foam board covered in shapes cut from colored poster board – but when it came to gluing them on, I had no master plan, I just slapped them on there. I really didn’t know what the whole thing was going to look like so, in effect, there was a plan but part of the plan was the serendipity of randomness.

“Serendipity” literally means “surprised by joy” and that is often what I feel after I’ve allowed that randomness into something I’ve created. In a way, when you make room for randomness, you give yourself an opportunity to be surprised, to be taken aback by something you hadn’t intended, or to have something emerge you could have never imagined. As I go along in this Year of Creating Dangerously, I am discovering more and more that the sense of the ad lib, the spontaneous, the unlooked for, is something that propels me in life. I live for the moments of serendipity.

At first I thought this Planned Randomness just applied to my artwork. But as I thought about it, I realized that it is in fact a characteristic of my entire life. I have never been much of a planner and I have often thought of it as a character flaw. Perhaps it is, but likely it is the way I am, and the way I am is like that for a reason. I am comfortable with making-it-up-as-I-go-along, with not having everything planned out before I go into things. Of course, I have had to learn to prepare and to be confident in what I undertake in life. My laxity can come across as laziness or unpreparedness, and certainly that has been the case at times. But it has served me well in my creativity, in my work life, in my relationships, to be open to whatever may come my way, without trying to force things, without having to have all the answers and information in advance.

However, I have also learned how much I value the people around me who do plan, who do research, who are capable of thinking things through step-by-step. Without them, I would be a mess and would probably create a lot of messes along the way, too. Planned Randomness needs Flexible Planners and, thank the Maker, I have had many of them in my life: People I can lean on to fill out those things I am just not good at. I believe my wife is one of these people, as well as friends, co-workers, and others that have come along in my life.

Planned Randomness is guiding me in this blog project for 2017. I quite often have no plan from day-to-day, despite my desire to do a post on creativity for each day of this calendar year. Almost subconsciously, I have planned in a spontaneity to this whole exercise. Perhaps that is fitting as it is a deeply personal experiment in discovering creativity, in seeking inspiration, and in being an inspiration to others.

As I started writing this today, I had no idea where it was going or how I was going to end it.

Typical.

A Year of Creating Dangerously, Day 44: To Be Nobody but Yourself

As I was looking over my blog posts from the past, I came across this article which seems so apropos for my 2017 goal of posting some daily creativity. I wrote this almost three years ago and am happy to report that I am still on this path… and still winning this fight.  

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My wife bought a piece of artwork with this quote on it for me many years ago. She knows me very well. She understood then and she understands now that the “hardest battle” of my life has been the fight to be truly myself. She loves who I am and wants me to experience that and, more so, wants other people to experience who I am. Yet there are times I’ve felt crushed by the weight of other people’s expectations. And times when I’ve felt that who I am was slowly disappearing.

A friend of mine recently commented to me that it seems I’m going through a “mid-life revival”. I really liked that sentiment. He was referring to the fact that I have been delving back into artwork, posting my creations on Facebook and also writing the very blog you happen to be reading right now (thanks for that, by the way).  Edging closer to 50, I am putting myself out there more than ever and expressing myself in these ways more than I have for many years.

I am an artist. And like so many artists, I’m not content to stick to one area of creative expression but tend to dabble in multiple areas when I get the chance. I have always felt most fully alive when I am making visual art or making music or acting on stage or writing prose. I made the decision to enter the blogosphere because I wanted the impetus to get back into writing for the shear creative joy of it.

For many artists, the act of creating is almost as natural as breathing. But it has not always been so for me. I have had long stretches in life where I felt I was becoming someone else and that artist side of me was fading, fading away. There are a number of factors that contributed to this but most of it had to do with a Twofold set of realities in my life: (1) I am a Christian; and (2) I am a Pastor.

The evangelical Christian world is not always the most welcoming and accommodating world for the artist. Artists, when they are remaining true to their creative impulse, like to push the boundaries, ask the tough questions, challenge themselves and others to view their world from different angles and in different tones and hues. This impulse is not generally encouraged or fostered in the evangelical Christian setting. The mysterious, the mystical, the grey areas, the fringes – these are not places where the Evangelical mind and spirit tend to go. Yet they are precisely where the Artistic mind and spirit go on a regular basis. The Artist doesn’t mind ambiguity, uncertainty. The Evangelical minds it a great deal and much prefers clarity and certainty.

I am generalizing, of course. But I stand by these generalizations because they are so often the way things play out. And so often the Artist feels very much a stranger in a strange land when he or she dares dwell among the Evangelicals. I have dwelt in that place and felt strange indeed. I have sensed the tension. When I did have the Jones to create, I’d find myself self-editing, concerned that I might offend someone. Or I’d have to defend myself for acting in a play in which the character I was playing said “Oh my God.” Or I would get the less than enthusiastic responses that spoke quiet volumes of displeasure about something I had created. And often I found myself tucking the artist in me deep down somewhere where it would not rock any feathers or ruffle and boats.

Yet, ironically, I ended up in Christian ministry, a Pastor. I won’t get into how that all happened because, frankly, after almost 20 years I am still bemused by it. Imagine, if you will, already feeling on the margins of Christian life and then ending up as someone who people look to for leadership in that Christian life. My artistic sensibilities took a beating from my own sense of responsibility to “the Call” and from the expectations of the Flock. When these things conspired together the Artist in me became almost undetectable and I no longer felt the natural impulse to create. I would continue to be creative, of course, and find avenues to do so, but it became a sidebar to my life, not a main part of the story.

I was doing good things for people and trying my best to remain faithful to what I felt God was asking me to do. But my wife could see that who I am and what made me feel most fully alive were not being given adequate expression. So when she came across the quote above, she thought of me.

I do not blame my Christianity or my role as a pastor in the Church for this fight to be myself. If anything, I have found over the years that I have no one to blame but myself. It was my choice to hide things away, to bury the Artist deep within; no one forced me to do these things. If anything, this Mid-Life Revival is showing me my own responsibility in all of that and also challenging me to no longer allow that to happen in my life. And it is my faith, and the belief in a God who created me exactly the way I am supposed to be, that gives me the motivation to be nobody but myself. In fact, I have begun to see that it was the Artist in me, the part of me that liked to push the boundaries, ask the tough questions, not be content with simplistic answers, and continually embrace challenges, that has made me most effective in my years of Christian ministry. I look at the Bible and my faith from odd angles, as an artist would, and that has given a distinctiveness to what I do as a pastor.

To any of you out there who also exist in this tension-land of Art and Faith, I would ask you to take heart. You do belong. You do have a role to play. People will not always understand you. You may offend some. You may confuse others. And there may be times others question your faith or you yourself do the questioning. But as artists we’re here to give expression to alternate realities, to be on a continual quest for compassion, to make people feel a bit uneasy in order for them to see God where they hadn’t seem him before.  That is a scary but fabulous calling.

The Great Artist made you an artist for a reason. So be that artist.

To those of you who are not artists, know that we will sometimes freak you out, whether you are a Christian or not. We will sometimes offend you. We will certainly confuse you. But if you let us speak, sing, act, write, draw, paint, sculpt, dance – create – you will be opening yourself up to a much bigger world. And that expanse in your spirit and mind and heart will make it that much easier to embrace all of Creation. You, too, are unique and uniquely gifted. And you, too, help people see God.

From now on until I die, I want to be unashamedly myself. I still have a lot of work to do but I feel I’m on the right track. I have steeled myself for the fight. Bring it on!

A Year of Creating Dangerously, Day 24: The Creative Process

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So often, works of art come to us as fully formed creations. Whether it’s a song we hear on the radio, a play performed, a painting on a wall or a movie on the big screen, art is usually experienced by most when it has reached that nebulous moment of “completion” and has gone public. Of course, we have more access than ever before to the creative process behind so much art on display. In some ways, it may remove some of the magic. But I believe getting an inside glimpse can also help you see all those mysterious bits and angles, those unexpected and unplanned moments, that creep into any artistic endeavor. It’s not so much seeing the “man behind the curtain” as seeing the muse behind the creation.

Part of the joy of creating is going through the serendipitous happenings and the “oops” that become a key part of what you’re making. That is certainly the case for me, though I don’t always take note of it the way that I should. Or, perhaps, there are so many little moments that add up that it is hard to keep track. However, for my latest artwork, I decided to pay closer attention to the stages it went through and how I responded to those stages. Below is the finished product, which I posted here last week Friday:

divisible

“Divisible” Mixed Media on Poster/Canvas 2017

I’ll now take you through the process, beginning with…

The Angst – I know, I know- “Angst” is a horribly over-used word when it comes to creating art. It has been so over-used and over-done that it has become cliche. But I use it here in good faith and with the meaning of the word fully intact: A feeling of anxiety, apprehension, or insecurity (Webster’s Dictionary definition). I don’t believe every work of art begins here but the artwork above most definitely did.

Though Canada has been my home for over sixteen years, I am an American, born and bred. I don’t need to rehash all the news from the past year that was hashed to death, suffice to say that I am no fan of Donald Trump. In fact, in his campaign and demeanor, in is words and actions, I was appalled that he got so far as to be a candidate for the presidency. I am not a fan of Hillary Clinton, either, but the prospect of her being president did not fill me with dread. As I considered the concept of a “President Trump” I could only see the various divisions in my home country getting wider and wider; I could only see the hatred and extreme rhetoric growing and growing; I could only see families turned against each other, neighbors fearing neighbors, and the weak and vulnerable suffering. My heart was so full of this angst that the slogan “Make America Great Again” attached to such a person and his political agenda seemed a sick joke. Would the healing flow unhindered in the wake of a Hillary Clinton presidency? Of course not. The damage in the U.S. is too dire for one person, administration or political party to fix. But at least there would be some semblance of decency and attempts at unity. In Trump, I saw the total opposite. Like so many millions and perhaps billions of people all over the world, when America cast their vote and it became clear who the winner would be, it felt as if someone had died. I was angry and I grieved.

I do not state the above to get into a political argument with anyone. I simply state it as the reality of where my heart was at as we approached Inauguration Day. My heart was with people, people I love and people who I believe in and still believe in: the Americans I know in the America I still love. That is the “soil” that was prepared in me.

The Inspiration – There are those who would think this is the beginning of the creative process but I would argue that is not the case. The soil needs to be there before seeds are planted. An artist tends to be an open soul, that is, someone who wears their heart on their sleeve; someone who is very sensitive to emotions, happenings in their world, and to how things are effecting them and those around them. Inspiration grows from the soil of empathy.

In the case of my artwork “Divisible”, the inspiration I received came from an unexpected source. For the last few years, I have worked at a day program for adults with developmental disabilities. It is an environment where we provide skill building and employment opportunities to give people purpose and meaning in their lives. We have a number of small businesses including a woodworking shop, a jewelry making business and a pottery studio. I work in an art studio at the day program. There we give people the chance to express themselves individually, on paper or canvas, and then make their work available to the public through art shows and markets.

It was in the context of this studio that I received my inspiration. One young man we support wanted to make a painting a couple of weeks ago. He asked specifically to paint a picture of an American flag. Now, understand, I don’t believe this request was at all politically motivated. I know this individual well and have never heard him talk this way at all. Perhaps he heard staff talking about the coming Inauguration Day or about Donald Trump, or perhaps he just caught a sense of the general zeitgeist of the moment. Whatever it was, he wanted to paint the U.S. flag. So I got him a canvas and some appropriate paints, printed up a picture of the flag for him to see, and the below is what he created:

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I found this work to be amazing. His choice to make the Stripes of the Stars and Stripes veer upward, the expressionistic energy of the brush strokes and stark simplicity was quite profound. It is one of the best things he’s ever painted. And as he was doing it, I began to draw. I drew my own expressionistic, stylized American flags. I ended up drawing four of them, all in oil pastels, all on the motif of the flag. Here are those drawings:

At first I just drew because I felt like drawing. But as I drew an idea started to form: Take these drawings and turn them into one, big expressionist American flag. In doing so, maybe I could recreate some of that angst I was feeling, maybe exorcise some demons, maybe work through the anger and grief and get on with life. I wanted to convey the division I felt ripping through my home country and the pain that rift is causing so many people who really do love America. As so many artists have felt over so many thousands of years, I just had to get this out.

The Pre-Creation – In so many cases with artwork, the real job is in the pre-creation: that time of preparing and planning for what you hope the final product will look like. For the first step, I decided to tear my drawings apart and reassemble them on a canvas surface, preferably with a background of color and texture. With that thought, I set out to find that background. I decided to search my usual haunts: the second-hand stores where you can often find large canvases for little money. I searched through a couple of stores without finding anything suitable. On my way out the door at my local Salvation Army store, I saw the pseudo-artwork below, just sitting on the floor, leaning against the glass of the entryway to the store:

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I am not trying to be mean in labeling this “pseudo-artwork”. But the truth is that it is a pre-packaged item of moody colors and fake textures on a poster stretched over a canvas frame. It’s not a painting, it just looks like it from far away. It is “art” for those looking for something to match their decor and maybe lend a faux-hip vibe to their home. It is Wal-Mart Art. But for my purposes, it was just about perfect. It’s shape was flag-shaped. It was fairly large. And it had a dark background that would make a great contrast to my bright oil pastel drawings. It even had a slight hint of the same lines of an American flag already in it. This was an incredibly serendipitous moment and I knew instantly when I saw it that this artwork of mine was meant to happen.

I set about finding a time that I could complete this piece, knowing I’d need a couple of hours to paste my drawings scraps to this poster/canvas I had discovered. While I was biding my time, I was using my woodless colored pencils at work. When I sharpened them, I noticed how much color was in the shavings. I decided to save the shavings, not really knowing what I was going to do with them, but feeling that they might just come in handy.

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The Creation – The time came free for me to get to work and make this idea a reality. Armed with my scraps of paper, my background, my pencil shavings and my glue, I got busy…

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In the end, I slathered the glue over the top of all the bits of paper I had assembled and stuck on the background, then I took those pencil shavings and literally let them rain down on the artwork; wherever they landed is where I let them stick. Through the whole process I tried to act on instinct and keep a sense of motion and emotion. I didn’t think too much about where the paper scraps were laid down (only to keep a motif of the American flag somewhat in mind) and wanted to leave room for the unexpected to happen. Here is the finished product one more time:

divisible

“Divisible” Mixed Media on Poster/Canvas 2017

The Aftermath – This is a bit of a misnomer, as I didn’t just have thoughts about this piece when it was done; things were occurring to me all during the creation of it. But the pondering of what you’ve done brings to mind all the stuff you didn’t plan; at best, maybe you allowed for the unexpected but it still brings amazement when things happen you didn’t intend.

First of all, I was struck by how the human mind works. This artwork looks nothing at all like an American flag. But our brains reassemble it for us so that when we look at it, we see that iconic image we know so well, regardless of the colors being off and the lines of the original going helter-skelter all over the place. What the viewers’ brain will do is the secret weapon of the artist.

Secondly, I thought about the four original drawings and how they were all different in character. It made me think of how there are so many Americas in the perspectives of so many people, both inside and outside the country itself. We all think we know what the U.S.A. is but, really, we don’t. It is so many different things to so many different people. It seemed fitting that I used those original drawings to craft something that hung loosely together.

Thirdly, despite the title “Divisible” – a title I chose as a direct contradiction to the “indivisible” line of the Pledge of Allegiance – there is still a unity that holds the piece together. It is chaotic and messy, jumbled and frustrating, especially to the orderly-minded, but there is still things that hold it together, despite all of that. There are still things held in common; still things that are shared and valued together.

Fourthly, the colorful pencil shavings I spread all around the piece reminded me that the tapestry of people, cultures, traditions, beliefs, etc. of American people are the highlight of the nation. Often, these things are hidden, sometimes on purpose, sometimes not, in the quest for a unified vision as a country. But diversity doesn’t have to mean division. An understanding and empathy of those different from you gives strength, not weakness. That is a fine quality of the U.S.A. that should not be forgotten.

Fifthly, an “oops” was a large pile of shavings landing on the bottom right portion of the artwork. As I look at it the now, however, the shape seems almost human; more so, it looks like someone walking down a path, maybe moving on; maybe moving forward.

Overall, I realized that what was intended at first to express angst ended up expressing a lot of hope. It ended up being about love, not anger or fear.

That is my interpretation, anyway. Perhaps you see something entirely different or you don’t see anything at all. That is okay. Art is meant to be laid out for public viewing and public scrutiny; it will speak to some, scream to others, and be completely silent to others still. That is both the joy and agony of creating for the artist.

There you have it. I don’t believe this to be any kind of masterpiece. But it is worthy because I offer it to you.

 

A Year of Creating Dangerously, Day 12: Chagall, the Real Asher Lev

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Self-Portrait with Seven Digits, 1912-13

Artists inspire artists, art begets art.

As I continue to consider a crucial novel to my own artistic journey, “My Name is Asher Lev”, I was led to the real life artist that inspired, at least in part, the story by Chaim Potok. That artist was the Russian-French master Marc Chagall (1887-1985). Chagall was born and raised in modern day Belarus in a Hassidic community by devout parents. His gift was something so strange and unique to arise from his small-town, Jewish context. Chagall himself claims he didn’t even know what drawing was until he enrolled in a non-Jewish school.

The expression of his incredible gift was equal parts faith-inspired and  avant-garde. His use of color and dreamlike images influenced countless other artists, especially those of the Surrealistic movement. He and Pablo Picasso are considered by many to be the greatest painters of the Twentieth century. Picasso himself said, “When Henri Matisse dies, Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what color really is.” His use of crucifixion imagery in telling Jewish stories was revolutionary and directly influenced Potok’s story.

Below is a small gallery of some of my favorite Chagall paintings. See if you are observant enough to notice which painting inspired the musical “A Fiddler on the Roof” 😉

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White Crucifixion, 1938

 

chagall-the-praying-jew

The Praying Jew, 1915

chagall-the-blue-circus

The Blue Circus, 1950

chagall-i-and-the-village

I and the Village, 1911

chagall-the-lovers

The Lovers, 1913-14

chagall-solitude

Solitude, 1933

chagall-the-fiddler

A Year of Creating Dangerously, Day 10: Asher Lev

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“My name is Asher Lev… I am a traitor, an apostate, a self-hater, an inflicter of shame upon my family, my friends, my people; also, I am a mocker of ideas sacred to Christians, a blasphemous manipulator of modes and forms revered by Gentiles for two thousand years.”

It is difficult to describe the feeling I had when I first read “My Name is Asher Lev” by Chaim Potok. Sometimes a work of art lays a claim on you, as if it knows you better than you know yourself. This wondrous work of fiction did that to me. I have returned to this book again and again. There are only a handful of books I’ve read repeatedly over the years:”To Kill a Mockingbird”, “The Lord of the Rings”, “Heart of Darkness”, “Godric”, “A Christmas Carol” and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”. I suppose the ones you return to are the ones that mean the most to you and have helped make you the person that you are. But “Asher Lev”, because it is a story of an artist existing in the tension between creativity and faith, has always seemed the most intimate for me.

For this post I am going to let Chaim Potok do the rest of the talking, through the quotes of the book. If you are a creative person who also happens to be a person of faith, and you have never read this book, please – for your own sake – pick up a copy and read. Artists inspire artists, art begets art.

Quotes from “My Name is Asher Lev”, by Chaim Potok 

“I looked at my right hand, the hand with which I painted. There was power in that hand. Power to create and destroy. Power to bring pleasure and pain. Power to amuse and horrify. There was in that hand the demonic and the divine at one and the same time. The demonic and the divine were two aspects of the same force. Creation was demonic and divine. Creativity was demonic and divine. I was demonic and divine.”

“Seeds must be sown everywhere. Only some will bear fruit. But there would not be the fruit from the few had the many not been sown”

“I do not have many things that are meaningful to me. Except my doubts and my fears. And my art.”

“A life is measured by how it is lived for the sake of heaven.”

“Asher Lev, an artist is a person first. He is an individual. If there is no person, there is no artist.”

“Art is a person’s private vision expressed in aesthetic forms.”

“I do not know what evil is when it comes to art. I only know what is good art and what is bad art.”

“You can do anything you want to do. What is rare is this actual wanting to do a specific thing: wanting it so much that you are practically blind to all other things, that nothing else will satisfy you,.”

“An artist has got to get acquainted with himself just as much as he can. It is no easy job, for it is not a present-day habit of humanity.”

“Millions of people can draw. Art is whether there is a scream in you wanting to get out in a special way.”

“Every artist is a man who has freed himself from his family, his nation, his race. Every man who has shown the world the way to beauty, to true culture, has been a rebel, a ‘universal’ without patriotism, without home, who has found his people everywhere.”

 

Aside

To Be Nobody But Yourself

it-takes-courage-to-grow-up-and-become-who-you-really-are2

To be nobody but yourself –

in a world that is trying its best, night and day,  to make you everybody else –

means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight;

and never stop fighting.

e.e. cummings

My wife bought a piece of artwork with this quote on it for me many years ago. She knows me very well. She understood then and she understands now that the “hardest battle” of my life has been the fight to be truly myself. She loves who I am and wants me to experience that and, more so, wants other people to experience who I am. Yet there are times I’ve felt crushed by the weight of other people’s expectations. And times when I’ve felt that who I am was slowly disappearing.

A friend of mine recently commented to me that it seems I’m going through a “mid-life revival”. I really liked that sentiment. He was referring to the fact that I have been delving back into artwork, posting my creations on Facebook and also writing the very blog you happen to be reading right now (thanks for that, by the way).  Edging closer to 50, I am putting myself out there more than ever and expressing myself in these ways more than I have for many years.

I am an artist. And like so many artists, I’m not content to stick to one area of creative expression but tend to dabble in multiple areas when I get the chance. I have always felt most fully alive when I am making visual art or making music or acting on stage or writing prose. I made the decision to enter the blogosphere because I wanted the impetus to get back into writing for the shear creative joy of it.

For many artists, the act of creating is almost as natural as breathing. But it has not always been so for me. I have had long stretches in life where I felt I was becoming someone else and that artist side of me was fading, fading away. There are a number of factors that contributed to this but most of it had to do with a Twofold set of realities in my life: (1) I am a Christian; and (2) I am a Pastor.

The evangelical Christian world is not always the most welcoming and accommodating world for the artist. Artists, when they are remaining true to their creative impulse, like to push the boundaries, ask the tough questions, challenge themselves and others to view their world from different angles and in different tones and hues. This impulse is not generally encouraged or fostered in the evangelical Christian setting. The mysterious, the mystical, the grey areas, the fringes – these are not places where the Evangelical mind and spirit tend to go. Yet they are precisely where the Artistic mind and spirit go on a regular basis. The Artist doesn’t mind ambiguity, uncertainty. The Evangelical minds it a great deal and much prefers clarity and certainty.

I am generalizing, of course. But I stand by these generalizations because they are so often the way things play out. And so often the Artist feels very much a stranger in a strange land when he or she dares dwell among the Evangelicals. I have dwelt in that place and felt strange indeed. I have sensed the tension. When I did have the Jones to create, I’d find myself self-editing, concerned that I might offend someone. Or I’d have to defend myself for acting in a play in which the character I was playing said “Oh my God.” Or I would get the less than enthusiastic responses that spoke quiet volumes of displeasure about something I had created. And often I found myself tucking the artist in me deep down somewhere where it would not rock any feathers or ruffle and boats.

Yet, ironically, I ended up in Christian ministry, a Pastor. I won’t get into how that all happened because, frankly, after almost 20 years I am still bemused by it. Imagine, if you will, already feeling on the margins of Christian life and then ending up as someone who people look to for leadership in that Christian life. My artistic sensibilities took a beating from my own sense of responsibility to “the Call” and from the expectations of the Flock. When these things conspired together the Artist in me became almost undetectable and I no longer felt the natural impulse to create. I would continue to be creative, of course, and find avenues to do so, but it became a sidebar to my life, not a main part of the story.

I was doing good things for people and trying my best to remain faithful to what I felt God was asking me to do. But my wife could see that who I am and what made me feel most fully alive were not being given adequate expression. So when she came across the quote above, she thought of me.

I do not blame my Christianity or my role as a pastor in the Church for this fight to be myself. If anything, I have found over the years that I have no one to blame but myself. It was my choice to hide things away, to bury the Artist deep within; no one forced me to do these things. If anything, this Mid-Life Revival is showing me my own responsibility in all of that and also challenging me to no longer allow that to happen in my life. And it is my faith, and the belief in a God who created me exactly the way I am supposed to be, that gives me the motivation to be nobody but myself. In fact, I have begun to see that it was the Artist in me, the part of me that liked to push the boundaries, ask the tough questions, not be content with simplistic answers, and continually embrace challenges, that has made me most effective in my years of Christian ministry. I look at the Bible and my faith from odd angles, as an artist would, and that has given a distinctiveness to what I do as a pastor.

To any of you out there who also exist in this tension-land of Art and Faith, I would ask you to take heart. You do belong. You do have a role to play. People will not always understand you. You may offend some. You may confuse others. And there may be times others question your faith or you yourself do the questioning. But as artists we’re here to give expression to alternate realities, to be on a continual quest for compassion, to make people feel a bit uneasy in order for them to see God where they hadn’t seem him before.  That is a scary but fabulous calling.

The Great Artist made you an artist for a reason. So be that artist.

To those of you who are not artists, know that we will sometimes freak you out, whether you are a Christian or not. We will sometimes offend you. We will certainly confuse you. But if you let us speak, sing, act, write, draw, paint, sculpt, dance – create – you will be opening yourself up to a much bigger world. And that expanse in your spirit and mind and heart will make it that much easier to embrace all of Creation. You, too, are unique and uniquely gifted. And you, too, help people see God.

From now on until I die, I want to be unashamedly myself. I still have a lot of work to do but I feel I’m on the right track. I have steeled myself for the fight. Bring it on!

Aside

An Artist Again

self portrait with snowman January 2015

Twenty-five years later, I am an artist again.

Way back in the spring of 1989 I graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. For the better part of five years I created art, studied art, talked about art, was surrounded by art. After that day when I was robed and mortar-boarded in order to receive my diploma, art virtually disappeared from my life. With no sense of where all this art was taking me, I had begun looking into other avenues for potential careers. I felt no burning desire to continue on the path to a Masters degree in Art or to make my way to New York City or grab the first job that came along to fund my creative Jones to draw and paint. Instead, I felt like I needed to “do something” with my life; make it count; serve people and serve God.

My decisions and choices began to veer away from art. Having grown up in a family that highly valued Christian ministry, I dabbled in missions for a bit, traveling overseas to test those waters. After that I dove into the heady world of Calvin Theological Seminary, plunging into a crucible that almost incinerated me. From there it was an accidental internship at my first church in Wisconsin, a premature ordination before my Masters of Divinity was completed, and then a leap of fancy into church planting in Ottawa where I experienced a different kind of crucible altogether, which ended in taking that particular ministry off life-support and letting it die. Emerging besmirched and bewildered, I wandered from job to job, desperately seeking something not related to Christian ministry. My search proved successful and unsuccessful at the same time: a man unsure of his calling to be a pastor met up with a community of faith unsure if they wanted a pastor at all; perhaps not a match made in heaven, but just the place I needed to begin the slow process of understanding what-the-hell-my-life-was-all-about-anyway.

Attached to this move back into church work was another move that seemed at first to be a sidebar, an add-on to what was really important to my life: I began to work part-time for an organization that serves people with developmental disabilities. For very practical, monetary reasons I had to take on a second job. Being a Christian organization, they weren’t confused by my CV and I was soon working at a group home in the Ottawa area. For the better part of three years, I worked the pastor job and the personal support worker job side-by-side. I was doing something with my life, making it count, serving people and serving God.

But where was art in all of this?

As a child, if I had a spare moment, a pencil and some paper, I was drawing, drawing, drawing and drawing some more. My dear Mom, bless her insightful soul, used to sneak papers inside a Bible she brought to church so I could draw away during my Dad’s sermons. Being a huge fan of comic books and superheroes, I even created my own line of characters. My stapled-together pages of typewriter paper would be filled with panels of adventures of the Pilot, Son of Samson and, my personal favorite, Mass Man. At school I was simply “the artist”, both praised for my fortunate ability to create and bullied for the sensitive person I had the misfortune to be. I was not a great student or a stud athlete so I came to define myself solely on my abilities as an artist. No great surprise, then, that when it came time to continue my education beyond high school, I chose to pursue a Fine Arts degree.

A lithography print from my college days

A lithography print from my college days

My childhood identity was art. More than some kind of “happy place”, art was a place where I found joy and purpose; art was so much a part of me that I likely could not have imagined it ever not being a part of my future.

It comes as a big internal shock to consider that twenty five years have passed in which the art part of me was pushed far, far to the margins. Certainly, creativity played a large part in my life over those twenty five years. I had many opportunities to write and present messages, act and sing, dabbling now and again in graphic design or some cartooning for a church advertisement, Sunday school lesson or powerpoint display. The creative process in its many forms kept me going in life, without it I would wither away. But truly devoting myself to art, for all intents and purposes, completely faded from my understanding of who I was and how I was gifted.

Then, lo and behold, along the path of my life I took a side-road less traveled by, and it has made all the difference. Feeling unchallenged and frustrated in the group home context, I pursued a change of the “sidebar” job by applying to an adult day program serving people with special needs. It is a place that is part vocational training, part school, part business and part something completely undefinable.  But within this context there came an opportunity for me that would never have materialized if I hadn’t taken this second job for practical and monetary reasons. After a few months, I became the instructor/facilitator of the art division of the day program. Charged with helping the people we care for learn about art and make art, I am now, once again, surrounded by art; quite literally, in fact, as my art room walls are covered with many creations of mine and the other artists there.

Tree House, colored pencil on construction paper, 2013

Tree House, colored pencil on construction paper, 2013

I am “the artist” again. I am drawing and painting again. I am getting my hands dirty with charcoals and tempera paints and markers and oil pastels. I am feeling the joy of seeing something emerge on a piece of paper in front of me, something that wasn’t there before, something that was crafted by my hands and is now my own.

After twenty five years, it is very difficult for me to adequately describe how this feels. But a truth in it all is that I feel I am fully and truly developing into who I really am after all this time. I am the person who has been involved in the bizarre ups and downs of Christian ministry, yes, but I am also the person who longs to create art, to express myself that way and to give that part of myself, too, to the world around me.

After twenty five years I am becoming okay with the thought that being an artist is also doing something with my life, making it count, serving people and serving God. In fact, being an artist may be the deepest and most profound way I could imagine living my life. It took me a long time to get here but, in the end, it all makes sense. I have a heart to serve people and I have a heart for art. I am blessed to see those two things come together for me now, a quarter of a century and a lot of living later.

Chalk pastels on paper

Pitcher with Roses, Chalk pastels on paper, 2014

Please check out the Facebook page dedicated to my artwork: https://www.facebook.com/RSKadoodles