Sunday, October 31, 2010

An Observation on Art


Though I love to "consume" art... and am a glutton of it...
I find that I am really only at that place where I feel a religious experience, a relation to the Godhead, is when I am creating art. Either in my newfound love of watercolor, or in Asian style inking, in 3d computer building, or paper model design, I feel the presence of the rough scarred hands next to me. What draws me to consume other's art in painting, music, writing or sculpture is knowing that they too, consciously or not to them, are expressions of that same set of callous, nail crippled artist's hands.

When the idea arises that we are made in God's image, there are all the various arguments about language and spirit/soul divisions and civilization that most people use to divide us from the animals and plants in God's workmanship... but for me, its the creativity, the expressions of the freedom from the bonds of the hum-drum that express worship of the One whose ultimate expressive power is the very power of creation itself. Art is the place where we come the closest to "out of nothing, everything" that only God can truly achieve. Our great creative power displays His, our limitations in that creative power but insistence in trying magnify God's limitless and mighty power.