Creativity for the healing of the nations.

Healing of the Nations © Genesis+Art Studio

FROM OUR STUDIO:

We recently completed a body of work for the new Skainos Chapel in East Belfast, Northern Ireland. Thirteen in total, our prayer paintings are reflections on the writings of Genesis and the book of Revelation. This particular piece called Healing of the Nations is a reflection on Rev. 22:2, and the leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations. Working in the studio on our painted prayers paralleled the US elections. With words and images of anger, power grabs and venomous attacks, people of power added their ingredients and stirred up an unhealthy pot of hatred and grinding away at our very souls.  Post election calls for revolution and revenge are a result of months of divisive language. We hope that we are not as divided and cynical as it seems. It was timely for us to be reflecting on healing.

Our reflections for healing are delicate and spiritual at best, perhaps like peace itself. Our process of painting together gives us a feeling that life is being generated when we turn towards one another. Drawing close to the vine gives us life, while separating isolates and stirs more despair and destruction. Creation is happening and is constantly evolving, as one-friend states it’s a verb.

Creativity and the act of creating opens a space where the possibility for a transcendent experience can take place. This is what creativity does. It is a circle, a circle of creativity and wholeness that opens a dialogue between the divine, the viewer and us. And many people know, from their experience either in giving birth to the creativity in them or to receiving it from others, that these become some of our most profound mystical experiences. When we are open to one another and connect our relationship to our creator, we will travel the rapids of creativity together on a raft over which we have no control. We’re being borne along by the power of the Holy Spirit, trusting in this process of renewal.

In the thirteenth century, St. Thomas Aquinas said, that the same spirit that hovered over the waters at the beginning of creation hovers over the mind of the artist at work. The work of creation, whether it happened six thousand years ago or 13.7 billion years ago is still going on today. Creation is continuous and we as humans, gifted with creativity, have a role in carrying this great work forward. We are also radically dangerous for this same reason as we carry within us this divine power of creativity.

When we imagine healing between us, and all nations, we see art as a visual language that helps transform divergence into dialogue. Art and creativity can empower us so that what was separate becomes whole, what was severed becomes healed, what was difference can become welcomed diversity. Perhaps moving us closer to the healing of nations.

Painting as Prayer

Holden Village Vesper Service. Photo © Lisa Thompson

FROM OUR TRAVELS:

Painting as Prayer by 
Chuck Hoffman + Peg Carlson–Hoffman
Holden Village Vesper Service
Holden Village Voice 
24 August 2012

How many of you consider yourself an artist? Generally if I ask a Kindergarten class, “How many of you are artists?” nearly every hand waves enthusiastically in the air. By third grade, half the class and by sixth grade, maybe just a handful.

What happens to us? How do we lose our sense of creativity? Do we begin to dismiss our need for inspired expression as we dissolve into the mainstream of cultural needs? Could we awaken our imaginations and see new possibilities in what appears to be fixed and framed ways of doing things? How could the arts enable us to risk new ways of existing with one another in our world?

The arts can help till the soil of our hearts. By opening the door to our imaginations, art can help reveal, heal and renew our spirits, our churches, our communities and our world. We need to risk coming together in our diversity, and re–imagine issues that divide us; the health of our planet and the ability to see our neighbor in the image of our creator, God.

The arts can provide a new lens to explore our faith and an understanding of our place in creation.

In one of our classes at Holden, a painting was created and placed on the altar with a belief that creativity is a gift from God and using that gift is an offering back to God. The process itself is a form of prayer, where time seems suspended and our thoughts connect with our feelings. Color, shape and form become our language.

The process involves having our group around the table.
• Each person has a single color of tempera paint, the paint we all used in our beginning days as young artists.
• We paint to music, but there is no talking during the process to get at the contemplative and prayerful nature of painting in this way.
• When the bell rings paint moves to the left and we move to the right. That way you have a new color to work with and you are now interacting with your neighbors painting.
• We move around the table working with one another’s ideas.
• We do this until we have covered the entire paper.

We created this together as a group. We each brought our individual expression to the table. Coming alongside our neighbors, we shaped a collective visual language. We forged ideas that allowed individual perspectives that are still evident in the painting. But the painting became a work that none of us could have created alone. In creating–we must become transparent. In this vulnerability new revelations about ourselves and those around us can be revealed.

The imagination is like a lantern that illuminates the inner landscape of our life and helps us to discover our hidden riches. The claiming and reclaiming who we are as persons created in God’s image, growing in the likeness of Christ to serve a hurting world, comes as we intentionally open ourselves to the movement of the Holy Spirit. By pushing back the boundaries of the familiar and being guided into areas of the unknown, we experience that which we did not know was in us – surprised by God! 

Prayerful beginnings

Twelve Tribes © Genesis+Art Studio

FROM OUR JOURNAL PAGES:

The artistic direction for our Skainos prayer paintings took into consideration the intimacy of the architectural form created for this sacred space. The size and treatment of the painting surface and color were created to give a sense of prayerful intimacy. Each piece of our art began with our own prayers penciled onto the raw canvas. Beneath our many layers of paint, the prayers began a dialogue with the Divine, blessing and invocation calling the viewer into a glimpse of the mystery of God’s intimacy, love and grace. We offer our paintings as a visual pathway to prayer and contemplation.

Skainos: Where life abounds

Living Waters © Genesis+Art Studio

FROM OUR JOURNAL PAGES:

We recently completed and delivered our series of painted prayers for the Skainos Project and the East Belfast Mission in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Our inspiration is grounded in the writings of Glenn Jordan of Skainos titled, The City of God in the Here and Now; the re–imagining of a sacred community in East Belfast that birthed Skainos. Its many mystical references to imagining, thin places, creativity, transformation, garden paradise and renewal conjured portals to the divine and of a space where we find walls soaked with stories.

The mystical references drew us to the creation story and garden paradise narratives of Genesis, seeing God as creativity. We were also inspired by John’s proclamation in his Book of Revelation of a new vision and imagining of the heavenly city breaking into this world. The thread that connects these stories is love. We have the living waters of Christ found in the Gospel of John and the love poems of Solomon. In John 7:37–38, Jesus refers to himself as the living waters of all creation. John writes, “On the final and climactic day of the Feast, Jesus took his stand. He cried out, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Rivers of living water will brim and spill out of the depths of anyone who believes in me this way, just as the Scripture says."  And in Song of Sol 4:15 “Thou art a fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and flowing streams from Lebanon.”  We have worked with both of these texts for inspiration and the central element for the larger painting. Water is a vital component to East Belfast, (meaning river mouth) and creations element that allows life to abound both physically and spiritually.

The Song of Songs, are the sacred and sensual love poems of Solomon. We see these love songs as figurative in how they speak to the great mysteries of God’s shared intimacy with us, where we’re witness to love, and also to love’s response. Beauty and sanctity in human love becomes a reflection back of God’s Divine love for us. Embedded within Solomon’s words, we find the One who most intimately holds our hearts and binds us to one another.

Where the water flows

Watching the water flow © Genesis+Art Studio

FROM OUR TRAVELS:

Two weeks in the mountains at Holden Village offered us a time for connection with new friends and a time for silence and contemplation. We facilitated our workshop, Heaven of the Heart: Creating a Space for Sacred Imagination and found time to hike into the mountains with sketchbooks and watercolors. This sacred space offered us an opportunity to create within this beautifully rugged creation. It changed our lens for seeing and hearts that opened us to wonder of God’s creation, both in the mountain lakes and the people we shared meals, art and conversation. What a blessing!

Transformation by water

On Lake Chelan to Holden Village © Genesis+Art Studio

FROM OUR TRAVELS:

We have never been to Holden Village, deep in the Cascade Mountains of Washington. You can only get to the Village by mountainous trails or by boat, it’s that secluded from the world. While we have heard many stories over the years about its transformative nature, we have never experienced Holden first hand, until now. Our excursion began at Fields Point and arrived at the boat dock in Lucerne some two and half hours later. It became a spiritual journey as we shed our world that so desperately wanted to continue to claim us and transported us by the mystical realm of water. As our boat docked, we were greeted by a driver and a yellow bus to take us up the switch backs the remaining 14 miles into the Village. We arrived to strangers clapping a warm welcome to each of us. We gathered our bags and found our new home atop the road in a chalet that overlooked the Village and the mountains that surrounded us. We had arrived someplace amazingly special. 

Working from the Chaos

Whether at work in our studio or in our workshops,
we explore and allow the chaos to give rise to transformation.
Photo © Heidi Hoffman Photography

FROM OUR STUDIO:

Our work is the result of collaboration. We go beyond the conceptual sense, to include working together on the same canvas. We paint at the same time, forging ideas together that neither of us could create alone. We experience this as both visual and verbal communication. When we begin our conversation in paint, it is important to let each of our voices be heard, allowing expression of our unique perspectives. Chaos seems to be necessary to get to the deeper order that unifies our work. Because we know that ideas usually don’t move in a straight line, we make intentional space for a more organic and flowing nature to take hold. Sometimes it takes courage, faith and time to allow ourselves to be transformed by the process. We have found that our usual rushed and me focused behavior finally gives way to the quiet gift of being together. We bring this process into our workshops where we create paintings in large groups, much the same way we create our own work.

In life, and in conversation, things can get messy. The visual language of color and shape, helps us think about larger issues together. Perhaps it is because most of this conversation takes place on the visual right side of our brains, rather than the verbal side. When we look at our results, we see evidence of our individuality, as well as the presence of a third dimension–the spiritual. We are always surprised by what we have painted and discovered together and what we find in common. It is what we call Painting as Prayer.