Everyone An Artist

Who are your favorite artists?

One of my graduate school requirements was to take an art class (yes, in seminary!). In the first class, I remember vividly the professor, herself an artist, said to us: Everyone is an artist. Then she looked carefully around the room, meeting each set of eyes, saying, “Yes, you are an artist.” We talked about this history of religious art and seeing the spiritual in all art. She never gave up the refrain that “everyone is an artist.”

I am fond of the Impressionists and I love iconography. I find myself moved by the photography of Ansel Adams. I do not have a favorite art any more than I have a favorite mood. I look and listen with the “ears of my heart” to what is unspoken and spoken in art. Art captures something real, an image of the creative Spirit.

Sometimes words fail me; Rublev’s “The Holy Trinity” never does. More than words can sometimes, art offers the catharsis of self-expression. My own untrained drawing, coloring, and painting articulate “me” in a way I could not otherwise. Art invites me to see and experience life differently; where words might attempt to limit, art removes the boundaries.

Back to my seminary class. As you might guess, our final project was creating a portfolio of art to present in the final class. I saw some moving self-expression from my classmates that day; I shared some work I had done in an art form called monotype (more here). I knew nothing about monotype previously but the resident artist at our seminary was working in monotype so I learned about it from her.

This piece was one of my first, and I used a subtractive method with Speedball water-soluble ink (black) on glass.

I am not a trained artist; I simply enjoy art, that of others and creating my own. No, I am not my favorite artist. However, I am learning to appreciate art as a way to show in color and shade bits of reality I co-create with the Divine. I receive art as a gift.