PERMISSION TO INVENT OR FAIL

       Welcome to a safe place where you have permission to create, invent and/or fail toward successfully bringing the Invisible that inspires you and to become the visible expression of who you are.  We call the Invisible Inspiration “God”.  We are not afraid to say the name “Jesus” here. 

       Since you have found this blog, perhaps you already know that you are called to a higher purpose for expressing Jesus to a lost and dying world.  As believers, we are all called to carry the Gospel to the nations.  Some of us do this by sharing in daily life how He has transformed our lives and we want others to know the Peace we have found.  Some of us can easily articulate with spoken or written words.  Many others live out Christian principles in their daily lives and demonstrate Christ with their absurd generosity, gratitude and kindness to the “least of these” in the culture around them.

       Others freely sing and dance in worship to show a reverent devotion to the Lord.  Others paint, weave, photograph or sculpt.  You however, are unique in your expression of who Jesus is in you.  Perhaps you lack courage to begin or think you can’t even draw a straight line.  Perhaps someone was always there to tell you to “color inside the lines” when all along, you wanted to freely color outside the borders and with the colors of your own choosing. 

       Perhaps you have never thought about how you could best express your love for Jesus or thought about visual ways that reveal your burning desire to know Him in a deeper, more intimate way.  Perhaps you sit and daydream and find yourself doodling.  Before you know it, a page is filled with words and prayers or marks on a page that defy your understanding and you ask yourself,

       “Where did that come from?”

That burning desire comes from the Holy Spirit who inspires us with a longing to know the nature of God more deeply.  We are most like our Master Creator when we are creating.

 

       One of my painting teachers once helped me overcome my fear of taking the first dabs of paint to a blank piece of watercolor paper by saying,

       “There’s nothing sacred about a sheet of paper, Kate.” 

He helped me see that ART is what I do with that $2 sheet of paper, canvas, or fabric.  He was also the same teacher, who said,

       “Embrace your uniqueness and the museums of tomorrow will come looking for you.”

       It’s been almost 30 years since Doug Walton said those words to me and there have been no museums knocking on my doors.  I have embraced my uniqueness in the variety of ways I create and you are now reading such an example.  I don’t know exactly where this blog will lead us all, but I do intend to talk about some of my past art.  I’d like to bring the past into the current and reach forward to bring my future into the present.  I hope there are more of you like me out there who find it difficult sometimes to begin again.  I hope you will want to come out and play with others who want to throw the rules away and just put color on a page!

       A question I ask myself often these days is, “How do I best express my faith through my creativity?”  My goal as both a Christian and an artist is to invade the atmosphere of the art world with the person of Jesus.  If you are such a visionary, then I hope you will join our artist’s laboratory experiment with as much permission  as you need to create, invent or fail forward into His Presence. 

       Now, that is SACRED.
(c) Copyright 2014