Blog

When I signed on with  a FASO  web site years ago, I had goals and dreams of doing what I love, sharing with others who also enjoy art, and, of course, selling art.  Over a two-year period my husband (with help from great friends) built me a studio--another dream come true!  I settled into painting, teaching, selling art, and having great interaction with my local art group.  I felt like I was living my dream life.

And then change rocked my world. My husband and I felt called to teach in China.  "Called" is a term that will be understood by those who know the Creator as we have been privileged to know Him.   I will save that topic for another place since right now I am writing an art blog and want to stay focused here.

I determined to continue being an artist even though my schedule would no longer be my own, my studio would be left far behind, and I would have to learn to get around in a new culture and city. It was not easy. 

Change has rocked my world again. Now my husband is back in China, I am in my childhood hometown spending precious time with one of my greatest heroes, my Dad, as he wages war against the last enemy, death. 

So what does this have to do with an art blog? Everything. If art were merely a passing fancy, a hobby to keep me occupied in my free time, I would have packed up paints and brushes long ago.  But art is a gift from the Creator that often keeps me grounded in reality---the reality of an Infinite beauty that outlasts new things that become old, of material “stuff” that reflects a greater glory than what is revealed in the now.   

I recently read a blog that talked about mathematicians’ brains responding to  equations like artists and musicians’ brains respond to the fine arts.  I wanted to laugh for joy.  The Infinite speaks to us from the creation because, as George MacDonald says, even language itself uses the concrete image to reveal the abstract. 

Lest this blog sound too philosophical for anyone’s good, let me move from philosophy to “table talk.”  Yesterday, I took a much-needed break from being inside with my Dad to stand outside  at his doorstep with my pochade and paints.  I painted his old barn and the tree beside it, the barn from which he has carried tools and rode tractors to care for his garden and yard and family.   That tree, now gnarled with naked branches will soon burst into a  cloud of pink blossoms and declare that life has come, not death.  And I have been refreshed, renewed, and reminded of life eternal where the Infinite will one day be perfectly revealed.  But right now, paints, pochade, and plein air  have given me reason to be thankful I’m an artist.