Repainting the World

I’ve considered myself an artist since I was a child. I remember sitting outside during my fifth grade art class and imitating, as best I could, Van Gogh’s brushstroke technique using pastels. I’ve never lost this desire to create things and give form to my imagination. Indeed, my interest in art has sharpened as I’ve gotten older. Lately, I’ve thought a lot about the intersection of art and theology. How does creativity fit into redemptive history? At the end of the Book of Revelation, we receive a glimpse of the last things, the age when the world will be renewed and will no longer be subject to death and decay. The New Jerusalem comes from heaven to earth. Christ proclaims: “Behold, I am making everything new!” (21:5). This process of renewal is even now underway as God works in his people. The final age began with Christ’s resurrection, and the work of the church gives intimations of what a restored earth will look like. The physical creation will radiate with a beauty even more glorious than anything we can enjoy now. In this sense, art can give us a foreshadowing of what is to come.

The quest of the artist, in the here and now, is to transform the basic elements of the world into something profound, something magnificent, something hitherto unknown. In so doing, we reflect our maker’s image stamped within us; like God, we have the capacity to create. We also affirm the goodness of work; in Genesis, humans tend the Garden of Eden before the Fall. Work, then, is not something made necessary because of death and decay. Work has inherent value as a means of praising our creator. When the artist works, he or she repaints the world, allowing others to see it in a different light. I think about this when I’m composing lines of poetry, combining spices in my kitchen, or adjusting the shutter-speed on my camera to capture the vagaries of light. How can I do something new with what I see around me? The creation is good, though marred with decay; how can I emphasize its goodness, and in so doing point to Christ, the ultimate source of beauty? Art, for me, is a profoundly spiritual act, a form of worship. The ability to create beauty is one of our greatest gifts. When I imagine the Holy City at the end of time, I think most of the opportunities we will have to create and enjoy beauty, just as we were meant to in Eden.

I like to think that I have some skill as an artist, though the depth of this is debatable. I have a passion for writing, cooking, and photography, in that order. I’ve decided to use this blog to share with you the discoveries that I have made on the quest for beauty.

Here is a selection of some of the photos I’ve taken over the years. I’ve been very blessed in my life and have had the opportunity to live in a lot of places and travel to even more. Each photo has a particular set of memories attached to it. Sometimes I remember exactly what I was thinking when I took the picture. Other times a photo evokes the feel of the place, the people I came to know, and how much different (or the same) I am now. When I review my photos, I am reminded both of who I was and what I’ve become in the intervening years.

Carousel, Geneva