No matter what your job is, you’re always serving someone else’s interests. When I build a pamphlet for a business, I endorse their product. When I design a website for a conference, I support the message of the keynote. When a landscaper achieves excellence in stonemasonry, they still condone the client’s desire to ‘keep up with the Joneses’. In the creative enterprise, I sometimes find it challenging to reconcile the full range of perspectives that I serve. But this same diversity also brings with it refreshing, worldview-changing moments.

When I paint a mural for a child, I participate in the love of the family, and the joy and wonder of youth. I can put behind me for a moment, the politics of world-hunger, and simply endorse simple idealistic beauty and truth. This hopeful, idealistic rendering of sea turtles and manta-rays will be for the boy, David, a visual anchor on which he hangs his childhood imagination.

And that (not unlike a day at the beach) is refreshing.

Mylar Redemption – Large Size

I dislike most swimming pools, not because of the chlorine, but simply because they’re cold. Maybe it’s a mind-over-matter thing, or maybe it’s the diameter of my arteries: but when I step into a pool, a low "degrees Fahrenheit" translates into high degrees of blue and purple numbness. In testing out the waters of teaching this past semester, the art classroom thermostat also fluctuated. Often it was satisfying and warm (like a well-tuned, cascading showerhead); occasionally it was arctic and frigid. And now, as summer envelopes me, I resolve to express something of what I’ve learned in these experiences.

Weather-men animate for us maps of warm and cool colours, indicating pulsating rhythms like the temperatures of the ocean. Human beings, likewise, oscillate and writhe between modes of surviving and thriving. Survival, according to my colleagues, is apparently the primary goal of one’s first year in teaching. Well, I never bought that argument, and I still don’t. In fact, I’ve probably taken survival for granted, resting on a kind of over-confidence that I’ve gathered in growing up at a table where teacher-won bread was eaten. But the survivalists do speak grains of truth. The fresh brand of humility that is learned in working with loud, disrespectful, wonderful teenagers is unique to the field. Where else, but in art education can one repeatedly scrape dried paint out of a sink, asking "why?"? I supposed that in such instants of agony, teaching does momentarily become a mere survival exercise. In the long term, however, the joys of artistic engagement, of constructive criticism, of patience, and of living out an applied colour theory, remain catalysts for a thriving informed by the exuberance of creative youth.

The often-caricatured experience of the teacher as Daniel – surviving in the face of lions – offends me because it portrays students as beasts: in fact they are delightfully human. The encounter between teacher and teenager is of course incredibly intense. It is a long-term covenant in which a vast amount of potential is at stake, and which demands from all parties a bottomless supply of enthusiasm. When there have been failings, they really, really hurt. But in my better moments at ECHS, I think, the learning has been mutual. So here’s to teenagers: energetic, zestful individuals, thriving on overdoses of confidence and scepticism, their capacities for love (and hate) fuelled ever onward by their humanity.

Humanity can only be fully realized when (in Christ) we are forgiven, and (like Christ) forgive. In this latest digital painting, I want to touch on just that sort of redemption. In his refraction 31, Makoto Fujimura quotes Lewis Hyde, who tells us that the artwork is "a gift, not a commodity." I concur, realising that the gift economy must necessarily be also a forgiven economy. And so I want to forgive my students and colleagues for their excesses, and to be forgiven for my own. I want this flourishing flora to drink deeply from the pool of sustaining nutrients: faith, patience, forgiveness, endurance…. hope. These things, of course, are scarce, but it seems to me that God gives us just enough. We plant things that lose their petals to the wind, but in these flickering, broken acts of worship our Creator is glorified.

In this piece, I employ the visual language of art materials at ECHS. It is an aesthetic rooted in Fergus’ agricultural tradition, sprouting with the leaves of dry-erase markers and oil-based paint, blossoming through digital vector curves and the splattering of left-on-the-counter watercolours. Names, scrawled on mylar papermaking surfaces, have (among onion skins and clay) become organic petals. And here is the redemptive point: that even in the messes we’ve made, God finds beauty. So go, pick up the pieces of your mistakes, and make something out of it: for the lot of them, you’ve been forgiven anyway.

Sporting a perimeter of forests, marshes, horse farms, and used cars (for-sale), Campbellville Road is among the more scenic stretches of my Hamilton-Fergus commute. It’s also the locus of G-forces, and occasional near-airborne fun, the product of pushing speed-limit boundaries over quick little hills.

This week’s edition of my rural-road routine, however, presented me with another sort of discovery: one which bade me ponder the character of the turtle. It is of course, no coincidence that I recently finished a painting on this theme. The fact that one crossed my path with this kind of timing is either divine providence or a glitch in the Matrix.

So why did the turtle cross the road? Perhaps it shared my own interest in a successful morning commute. His only success on this morning, as it happened,
would be the causing of a ruckus, and being the trigger for this blog post.

Upon spotting the lumbering creature making his way onto the gravel shoulder, I swerved, ever so slightly, then proceeded to pull a U-ie (or is it a yuwie?) so as to further investigate. My own vantage point was one of… well… great advantage. Unlike the velocity-deprived quadruped on the road, my own elevated eyes could at least see the approaching minivan, whose projectile fully intended to intersect with that of the entity here concerned. In hindsight, the moments of suspense and relief that enveloped my mind at this juncture were somewhat exhilarating. But what really struck me was neither a minivan nor turtle guts. Instead, what I experienced during the rapid passage of firestone tires on either side of this clumsy life-form was somewhere between humility and wonder.

I really related to the turtle’s flinch: his swift instinctual ducking-of-the-head inside of his shell made me understand what faith was all about.This guy has a bombshelter, and knows how to use it. Somehow, the knowledge that this refuge was not designed to sustain the impact of a large heaps of hurtling metal did not matter. Was I witnessed was powerlessness, and I empathized: because that sort of state is one that I too have known. Do you relate to the flinch?

While I considered the options that remained for me and my dead camera battery, some other good Samaritan in a little red Toyota Echo had already pulled up ahead of me, bent on rescuing Turtle from the clutches of death. God bless her, but she placed him back on the same side of the road from whence he came. I hope that if he attempts his mission again, he’ll do to it at a safer hour: say, 3am on a Sunday morning, when the only cars on Campbellville road are the ones in which we find such signs as "for sale, inquire".

I hope that this weekend you’ll inquire about the price of art. I’ll be selling my pieces at the hamilton waterfront wingfest at pier 8 on Friday and Saturday noon till 9pm, in the art tent, booth 23.

Details are here.

All the best!

H

I love the blend of tension and unity that happens when flora and fauna embrace within a consistent context. Here, the physical strength of stone is the conceptual and visual base for the shell (and shelter) of the turtle, as well as the textural ground for a flowering of life. Whether aided by six legs, a pair of wings, luminescent scales, a sly slithering, or an instant ability to disappear within a fortress of armour, these creatures are endowed with context-driven content: the very apparently designed ability to work optimally within their own inhabited space.

This engagement with space happens at a much more complex level when men and women get involved. Our faculties of reason and faith imply a responsibility towards context, whether it be urban, rural, or otherwise wild. Sometimes our actions respect, sometimes they colonize our contexts: but all too often they leave behind such oily mud-puddles as these, which facilitate the dim scowl in a turtle’s reflection. So if these colour choices bother you as much as they bother me, let’s live as shepherds, and not squanderers of earthly space.

Shalom.

Turtle, turle – Large

Conversation was the thing I valued most about showing on James North, as well as at the McMaster Museum of Art. The images have created in these spaces a unique opportunity for me to connect with people in a particular kind of dialogue. Aesthetics and process were always a part of these moments of mutual understanding, but an engagement with the abstract, and a searching for memory, spirit, and God have always been present too. It is my hope that in continuing to show in a shared space – with others also on the wall – that the vibrancy might continue. The exhibition here advertised is part of "The Self Proclaimed Artist Show", a group exhibition, opening on Saturday May 9th, at Sealed Art on 89 Gage Avenue South, in Hamilton. I’m not sure if I actually want to "proclaim" anything. But I hope you will proclaim your presence.
H

The miracle of resurrection is (on a microscopic level) the re-arranging of particles, animated along a form that reflects the glory of the Force that moves them into position. At Easter, Jesus’ grave cloths, folded neatly in a pile (off to one side) communicate an orderly intentionality about the whole resurrection event that says: I have risen: and the rest of the world, in the wake of this moment, also begins to re-organize, after the Will of the Animator. The Animator has re-animated.

My own re-animations are cheap imitations: the work of a mere creature. But even of such lowly worms as you and I, God moulds his purpose. He reclaims our weaknesses for His glory. The detritus of these spent art materials, then, can also be reclaimed, reorganized, and revitalized, so that they once again become useful: elements in a story, parts of some bigger galaxy. And so my use of weak vessels in my art, my working to redeem their qualities, and re-direct their purposes, points to and mirrors the way in which God uses us. Atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell claims that "unless you assume a God,the question of life’s purpose is meaningless." On the flip side – though Lyotard may be incredulous – once assume a God, you’ll also be empowered to assume your place in his meta-narrative.

Creature One greets you with a wistful smile… a glance of simultaneous apathy and hope. Distant cousin of space robot 5, he gathers together his rusted, weary bones, and trudges on, staring out at what might be another battle (or perhaps just a sunrise); it will take resolve either way to follow through with this nearly human endeavour.

I resolve.

There is a sense in which my current theme, visual theology tires me out. There are times when it feels a bit forced, when I honestly can’t be bothered to make all the connections and to piece together a coherent worldview, a global story, from a set of mundane details. And so the meditative calm is what I crave: the place where God is found in the whisper. The tension in my work between sensory overload and zen continues.

To be honest, I feel less honest than usual with this piece. I am less invested in it than in some of my other work, because it took only 6 hours instead of 30. In reflecting on the result, that has begun to change, and I’m beginning to see where it’s headed. I think it’s a painting that I’ll work back into with some really dense physical media (charcoal and chalk, perhaps). It’s not going to finish up as a mere formal study on texture vs. emptiness.

Elijah (the Jewish prophet who lived a long time ago) was a pretty intense character: A-type personality. He took it personally when his words fell on deaf ears, and ended up being rather apathetic. So he goes out into the desert to sulk. I suppose that dry, weary places seem to facilitate pondering through deep issues. Anyway, he’s there and he sees all this intensity, but God doesn’t exist in those things. It’s in the negative space and the silence that God reveals himself.

As a Christian this has everything to do with Sunday. Thank God for Sunday in my tradition, because we all need negative space in our lives. I need to take time to hear the whisper.

It also connects to the veil image that I’ve used more than once. There is a sense in which a whisper conceals something latent, something bigger than the entire noise of the wind, the earthquake and the fire. It’s the awesomeness that exists beyond the veil that is so grand, that it’s impossible to grasp, but that humbles me to remain a mere creature.

Full Size

Harm not done
is quite another thing
from love lavished.

"Do not harm your neighbour
as you do not harm yourself?"

But Paul’s love definition, too
has a negative side:
It keeps no record of wrongs.

It’s balanced,
in that it always protects, perseveres, trusts,
etc.

Wherever you go,
there you are.

Miss statue
waving her metal flame
doggedly this first of March
(whose weather Februarian remains)
scorns this rusted, worn, graffiti-bearing bridge,
sealed from its monstrosity by mist
in simultaneous terms of physics; spirit; history.
It is the same
on either side of foggy separation
this brand of liberty, which candidly
facilitates both polished empire and slum:
spray-can empire,
and the slum that is the filth
within the hearts of you and me.
(to be redeemed…)