Aslan

A couple of times in the last few months I have found myself thinking of Aslan so I decided to re-read the whole Chronicles of Narnia series. It had been years since I last read it but the books transcend time and were again pure magic when I read them. Because of that Aslan remained in the back of my mind and the link between Him and Jesus being the Lion of Judah perculated away slowly in my mind. I thought of the childrens relationship with Aslan in the books and that easy friendship that existed between them and Him and my relationship with Jesus and the friendship I have with Him and I wanted to capture that in some way. So I ended up doing two artworks featuring Him from that perspective, I hope you like them.

Aslan – not tame, but kind

In my secret garden

 

 

HOPE

HOPE

I was asked to paint a picture during the worship time in a Church we were ministering at the other day. As I thought about what to paint, one word came to mind – the word “hope”. At first I was a bit taken aback as I wondered “how on earth do I portray hope?”. So I just started getting paint onto the canvas knowing I would be guided as I went.

As I painted I thought about what the word “hope” meant. To paint “hope” meant I had to also paint the stuff life is made of – the stuff in which we sometimes find ourselves needing hope – health, finances, jobs, family – all these and more can be areas where we need fresh hope – I would use colours to portray the emotional feeling of these. I knew I didn’t want to paint a real situation but to do something abstract, something conceptual that could be read differently by different viewers, allowing them to feel the emotional substance of hope.

As I thought about ‘hope’ I realized that worldly hope is fragile – it’s a wishful thinking type of hope with no real guarantee of anything good really happening. Scripturally hope is far different – the hope God gives is robust, strong, guarantees supply, and turns any situation into something beautiful. In scripture hope isn’t wishful thinking, its confident joyful expectation of something good about to happen.

It is a joyful expectation that something good is going to happen for you because God is good. Scriptural hope boldly delivers, and it comes with the guarantee of God himself behind it. Hope isn’t just an idea, a concept, it has spiritual substance that goes to work within us, and it’s also found in a person – Christ! Christ is our hope and he is our guarantee of hope.

So in the painting the first couple of layers represents the “stuff” we go through in life so it is all sorts of colours, some dark and heavy, some light and joyful. yellow, green, yellow ochre, prussian blue, slivers of magenta, purple and some gold leaf. A lot of those colours no-one will ever see but they are there just as in life -there’s stuff people see and there’s underlying stuff; but the underlying stuff lays down the foundation for the seen to be built on. The top layers are done in white, cream, yellow ochre and little flecks of gold. This top layer represents both hope and glory overlaying all else causing the underlaying layers to become something beautiful – it represents God’s hope at work within us – making all things work together for good – coming together to present something beautiful, full of depth and rich in the fullness of Christ’s life within us. “Christ in us, the hope of glory” – Col 1:27

Eternally one

“i am my beloveds and he is mine” – i know, valentines was weeks ago but i don’t really do valentines anyway, can’t be bothered with the consumerism of it all. however i do like to play and make things so the other day i remembered i had seen a logo for a headboard on someones site somewhere. i know, i should take more notice of where i see stuff but i see so much stuff it would take a whole computer just to keep records of what i saw where. is anybody else out there like that too?

anyway, the logo said “forever one” meaning you’ll only ever need one of their headboards but i loved the way they’d created it layering one word on top of the other, very simple but very stylish, so this is a knock-off recreation with a twist.

hey it was fun to do and I’m not going to sell it or anything so I don’t think they’ll get too mad, do you? so here is my homage to forever one –

T-shirt slogans

My friends and I were laughing last night about t-shirt slogans and tossed a few around including the first one featured below. I know that one would run into copyright issues if I tried to make it for real but it was fun to design.

Sometimes I think that as Christians we take ourselves too seriously here’s a few slogans that laugh at us a little and would maybe make great t-shirt designs.

inspiration trails

one thing that fascinates me is where people get their inspiration from. i have to confess a lot of my inspiration comes from playing and experimenting or pieces i see somewhere and i think “i could do that but what if i tweaked it here or did this to it, i wonder what that would look like?” and then the creative urge takes over and before you know it the everyday world is forgotten and i am lost in the world of my own creating. of course my works rarely end up as i see them in my mind, somewhere along the way something happens that leads me off on a discovery trail and before you know it i am a thousand miles away from where i started in my mind.

i suspect a lot of other artists and writers are like me too. it doesn’t help that my strongest strength according to tom raths “strengthsfinder” is adaptability. maybe because of that i am doomed to forever wander the trails of “what if” and “oh let’s try”. i find that while adaptability is my greatest strength it can also be a great weakness as many half finished projects can attest to; but that is my inspirational trail as i have walked it. luckily the results are usually something pleasing at least to me and most things do get finished. i have got better at that over the years.

this post started when i was browsing www.thisiscolossal.com and came across some exquisite paintings by a taipei-based painter Peihang Huang. Huang uses oils to create  dreamy barbie doll inspired paintings. it’s amazing what sparks our creativity – i know for me barbie dolls only inspire the idea of “barbieques” (maybe because of the word play there) not beautiful paintings – i have truly wondred what they would look like half melted and what shapes they would take on! a lamp made of half melted barbies and other toys is still somewhere in my future.

it seems for Huang too that idea of barbie dolls dying isnpired some of the works in the two series i saw – floral funeral and mad world. you’d think that the idea of death would spark something dark and morbid yet her works are full of vibrant life and beauty. you can see more of her work on Flickr.

check out these other sites too that have barbie as their inspiration becauseimaddicted.net/2012/01/barbie-tributes-to-famous-works-of-art.html www.whatthecool.com/post/3485347496/fine-art-barbie/    www.alteredbarbie.com/artwork/exhibition

inspiration strikes us all in different ways and we wander those inspiration trails in our minds usually for a while before our thoughts coalesce and become reality. how different each mind works as it takes the inspiration and begins the creative process. for me that is one of the things i love most about mankind – their creativity that is so varied and vast. i never get tired of marvelling over peoples creativity.

but maybe…

grandchildren can teach you a thing or two about life! one of the things i love about my granddaughter eden is her huge, optimistic hope. going past the train station the other day i said “no train today” and she said “maybe…”. another time – “sorry darling we don’t have any juice” “but maybe…” “maybe” is one of her favourite sayings and everytime i hear it i am encouraged to believe that maybe…..

it is all too easy as adults and even teens sometimes to let go of hope and optimism. certainly for creatives we can get in a rut where it seems like our creativity is  shut down and we get what is called artists or writers or whatever “block”. our world and belief in ourself spirals down and we somehow think that we will never find our way out of the rut. but maybe, “maybe…” should be our maxim. here’s a couple of quotes to help keep your “maybe…” alive.

the first is from a fav film “Princess Bride” the film where “maybe” reigns.

“we’ll never survive!” “nonsense. you’re only saying that because no one ever has.” – William Goldman, The Princess Bride

the second was found somewhere, but i forgot to take note of where sorry.

maybe, just maybe, there is a little creative magic about to be loosed from your life… just believe and tell yourself “maybe…”.