Author Archives: marynees

sky studies

Have you been looking up? We’ve been marveling at some of the moody blues and grays we’ve seen these past months. Online too, people are posting some amazing shots of cloud formations: some brooding, some exhilarating and some downright scary. What’s up with all this? I googled it and see that many people are dismissing incredible images as fake/photo-shopped alarmism. Am I and a couple friends just getting older and paying attention to basics that were always around? Or are these formations in the sky increasingly getting the attention of others as well? I’d love feedback on that question. What are you seeing?

moodysky This image from my backyard in June, is taken from my iphone and completely unretouched.

Meanwhile, I’ve been taking more shots of amazing skies from a certain hilltop near our home, at all different times of day and night, in all kinds of different weather. I have set these in a file called “sky studies”. skyStudies What you see here is an under painting value plotting (using simply burnt umber and ultramarine) for a series of 5. It’s about time, and wonder and expectancy. These, once finished with top layers of color, are going to go in a prayer room. I hope to get the finished series done this coming month. I worked on a couple of them yesterday and already they are looking pretty cool.

I’m working forward, even as I am looking up expectantly. And I have sound reason. Jesus made a promise of retuning. We don’t know when, time may continue for many more sky views. But my joy is increasing because Something’s coming.

big picture

Today’s the day that the kids come back into the hallways where this mural is evolving. Excited that we got all 10 faces done this summer, my friend Renee and I both turned to worrying out loud that somehow the individual kids who own these faces might be disappointed. A face is a very personal thing. And especially for a child, how they think others perceive them can be a real trip-up. Renee kept fussing over this little girl’s face. It was hard to stop. Not one of the paintings is perfect. Not one of the kids is perfect. Not one of the artists is perfect, Lord knows. We are all a jumble of things. But today they will see what we’ve attempted to do so far with their little twinkly smiles. It’s fixed. And then we will move on with the bigger broader picture.

Maybe (I am thinking to myself now) the big picture is already happening. That’s a hugely freeing thought. We have an active part in all this, but something else originated and will conclude everything that matters here that’s real. On these particular walls that’s my sense of it, and also in my own life. I had little clue when beginning this project. I had little clue when beginning my life. I have only a little more now. If I did not have an out-sized faith: a confidence in something bigger than me, which is worth knowing, I think I would just eat bon-bons, or download Pokemon Go.

This past week I was able to join a workshop conducted by the former director for the Chicago Public Art Group. The man was a lot of fun with a wealth of info. on materials and budgets and effective collaboration. But the best thing he said out loud was that “we have to get uncomfortable, and then examine why we are”. That’s what adults do. That’s what the best working projects expose. I hope the kids looking at their painted faces can have some courage to do the same overlooking. These are only likenesses. There’s more coming.

reflection

I’m getting some expert help on the mural project we are spearheading for a local non-profit. But this face I reserved to do myself. This little girl is precious, with big ideas, so she is being placed on one of the most important parts of the wall. I love her funky glasses. I love most the reflection out from her eyes and even off the plastic lenses. That was really, really fun to paint!

Recently I heard a guy in a sermon bring this application: “Ask 3 people you trust to tell you “what’s it like to be on the other side of me?” I asked two brave souls and got some interesting, necessary stuff. Whew. I’ve got some things to work on. I don’t really know, and neither do you, how the reflection off your face really translates into another’s life. I just know what I want it to be out of my own eyes. This little girl led the way for me. She’s got light in her soul. She loves Jesus. She responds to Him like a child in simple trust. She is going somewhere.

Choke

Listening to a clip from a mother who was shot in Dallas, the Sign showed up again.

She was describing the chaos. Though unused to the press lights, she was articulating brilliantly, authentically her concern for her boys around her that night: the dark fear of something emerging, the urgency to protect. And then she choked. What caught her twice was when she tried to describe what she saw when the officers near her went down. Each, in a moment, suddenly felled. Last breaths blown out. Lifeless now. Gone.

This is the wake up call, this thing we call death. It is a horror we simply cannot fathom the depths of. When we try to put words to it, we choke.

I believe death is the ultimate sign. In it’s devastating coldness it undoes us. All our complacency is shattered. It hits in different ways, in different times of life, but it hits/will hit every single one of us. We are never prepared. Few can get past it.

6 years ago today, I cradled a lifeless body in my arms. A little girl with chubby cheeks and toes just like her mamas, was now gone from us. Robbed. Ripped away. Never have I understood the gravity of life as in those moments. She was entirely new, perfectly formed. We all were choking, and still clutch at this loss. Death is a fearsome, irreversible divide.

Other writers have tried to articulate this. C.S. Lewis calls grappling with death’s darkness “a severe mercy”. Lori Roeleveld calls it “a weight worthy of a holy pause.” Jesus wept in front of it. He too choked, even when fully aware, even when He knew what soon He would be doing to reverse death’s dark dive. And time goes on in front of this for those still alive. Time ticks forward (never backward, never still). Moments come and moments go but each of us meets an end.

This blog is the musings of one sobered observer. My visual work is intricately related to what is presently on my mind. There is work going on in my studio, I may or may not post that. But if this is the last thing I ever write, I would want you to know beyond the subtle visuals, that the Author of beauty and order, the Creator is working now to win your soul. He choked at death even as He faced it down. He thought of you “Father forgive them” even as he breathed painful last breaths. He took the bullet. He alone has brought LIFE back out of the ground. You need to explore what He won for you. Because your life matters.

semblance

This blog is a stream of thoughts on current evidences. Each gives hint toward what I think is much bigger reality. My tag line above says I am “illustrating”, which may be strange because as an artist, I am not a skilled illustrator. I know at this late age what I can and what I cannot do. My own artwork is usually abstract, and certainly much less focused on human form. All this is intro. to some pondering today.

I am working on a mural for a non-profit in my community. I got to design the entire project and knew that the best idea for this refuge place for kids would be to highlight the very ones the organization serves. We took photos of 10 selected kids, then posterized them, and sketched the value divisions from each face onto the wall. Painting will start this coming week. What I hope to express here is how poignant it was to just draw their young faces, the unique smile curves, the spark in some eyes, the little crooked tooth, the sweetness on each entirely different form. These are just semblaces on a wall. But I know the real kids a little bit. I interviewed each to gain some buy-in for the ideas behind this whole project.

Each child represents one key value that guides this organization. To hear from the children was entirely motivating. So unique is each little person, with a complex mix of bents and desires and issues. So now, when I semblance their lines with pencil on the wall, I am thinking of each child with a love that I sense originates from their Maker. No wonder Jesus rebuked the disciples for attempting to dismiss the children. Little wonder had those guys! Like all of us, they had their own working agendas in front of their own faces and could not see what He was looking into. I am getting a glimpse.

While sketching onto this wall, I was living through the news reports; faces all lined up (each completely unique) who were mowed down by a murderer’s gun in Orlando. You probably saw those images too. I did not know those folks, and so I cannot share the same sense of relationship. But the loss is incalculable for those who loved them. Such searing pain is grief! We are all robbed when even one precious soul is ripped away. Robbed and ripped and many, many left sorrowing.

In a time when human life is so diminished, as anger and division takes center stage, as political agendas get staged while the blood is still warm on the floor, is anyone listening for how Jesus feels? Sketching faces of kids who hold dreams in their hearts, I was being pierced through. Anger, sadness, sighs and reverence are all mingled through these pencil lines.

I can hardly illustrate. I am tracing after a projection, my pencil follows the light. In the same way, I can hardly be coherent about what I sense are the working unseen values. But I feel Jesus’ heart, as if tracing after Him. And what I am talking about is both an engaging and a fearful thing. As an artist I am weighted with this significance.

And then I remember: this is what all art is, whether realistic illustration or abstraction, no matter the form. Whether seen and understood or not. It is all just a catch, a representation of something else. It is at best a quick and searing glimpse, a sign-post, a semblance of much truer things. What we do see right in front of us can point toward what we desperately need to see.

slice

When it is time for pie, what do you ask for? A slice is all you can manage, really. We instinctively get this. Being engorged on the whole of what is a really good thing–is not a good thing. Small doses are better handled. Our limits require bits, not wholes. The whole can overwhelm.

It is the same with the biggest ideas, the most important things. We need time with them, and time is a distinct mercy because of our very dastardly limits. Time gives us the opportunity to take it in.

Maybe this alone explains why I keep making art. It is a big thing that is too big for me. I am manipulating paint and wax, working brush and color, moving seriously through my own inner angst. I am looking for a way to feed, even as I am hungry.

And trouble is: every day there seems to be more and more to be upset about. A man I am close to, and respect a lot said to me in distress “I am angry all the time!” We both know we have to be constantly on the lookout for better slices.

As for that inner angst, I have recently been working on a long study of the Old Testament prophets, specifically gathering clues as to how they managed their emotions as things were going down. We are in that time. My anger is not a holy thing, even justified anger. I want to slice and dice the rapist. I want to slice and dice the smug and comfortable liar. I want to slice and dice those who pervert justice in their blindness to suffering. But I am not God (aren’t you glad). I sense indigestion deep in my core when I attempt His prerogative. Instead I am talking to Him, distilling with Him–and that work is a really good thing, something I want more slices of.

So, instead of slicing and dicing people (you, or me or the rapist) I will leave that to God who promises to do a good job of it. I will pass on His job.

And I will use my energy instead to slice a section of a piece I painted Monday. I was at a beautiful farm owned by a woman named Ginger in a place called Goshen Valley. I was standing painting quietly next to a friend who also is suffering on the inside and doing it bravely. We took courage together and both managed to look out and to gather in some of the beauty and the glory with our brushes. That was a good day. The whole is good. But for now: just a slice, thank-you. I can be sustained with a good slice. For here’s a simple truth, easy to absorb: that which is good comes from Him (every last bit of it) and that which is not good does not.

writing into the dirt

The idea (last post) of God writing has had me musing. For text marked into pieces of ground is kind of a current thing. Detailed is just a fragment of a painting I saw last week in a gallery in Asheville, NC. The hand is artist Carol Bomer’s. The marking of words gives direction not only visually but conceptually. One takes in the whole of this dark piece as it envelopes your eye-space, but then the writing captures your focus.

We think this marking into media is avant-garde. Search and you’ll find lots of new and inventive uses of text. But the idea is as old, really, as the hills. At the Mountain called Sinai, the finger of God etched his law into two pieces of rock. This inscribing of text was not Moses’ idea. The finished tablets were not Moses’ handiwork. The entire initiative was God’s. Moses was only the invited mediator. (There are many questions here: If God is God, why did he even need to use a finger? Why two tablets, why not 10, why not one? Why was any mediator needed? Why were words needed? Were the Hebrews, recently slaves, literate? Was the marking that God used common Egyptian?) Back to what’s clear in the story: Moses responded as he was asked. He picked up the rock slabs and brought them down from Sinai to the awaiting tribes.

Think about this even if you don’t know much more. The Hebrew text makes it plain that God’s own finger made visible markings on 2 pieces of mountain rock. He communicated, from His otherness into man’s space. This was one directional. He selected a means that was legible, tangible and understandable. Then came the history of man’s response to that specific communication.

Besides the later episode in Babylon with the mysterious hand (previous post), there is no other hint of God Himself writing in the whole of the Hebrew Bible.

Fast forward to what is called the New Testament or that part of Scripture that tells of Jesus’ arrival and the revolution he brought. There is only one recorded episode of Jesus writing. The story is found only in John’s telling of events. The context is a test. Religious lawyers drag a woman before Jesus. Having just been caught breaking one of the laws on Moses’ tablets, she stands vulnerable and shamed. These prosecutors figured shrewdly. With the evidence before them all, Jesus would be trapped. If gentle Jesus dismissed the woman, he would be sanctioning the breaking of God’s law, and therefore could be correctly branded as a false prophet. If Jesus, a righteous Jew, followed the law and condemned the woman to be stoned, the religious testers would be vindicated, their power enhanced with Jesus as their pawn. Jesus turned the tables, and this is how he did it.

He stooped down and used his finger to write something into the dirt.

“Doesn’t this man have eyes and ears?” “Doesn’t he understand the violation?” The accusers mocked and persisted, pointing their own fingers wildly. The noise around this huddle grew louder. Only one finger was writing. Then, remaining silent, Jesus stooped down a second time into the dust beneath them and wrote again. (What did he write? Could they all see it? Why a second time? In the angry heat, how could dusty marks be any tactic?) Whatever he wrote there is not explained, but what is clear remains. What he did in the dirt was enough to silence them all. One by one, the angry men put down their stones and walked away.

What strikes me is the symmetry in both these singular stories. When Jesus writes he is likely referencing the writing of God. The fact that he does it twice, and quietly is poignant. The law God wrote was left intact that day. But now one, with her feet still there in the dust, saw the final mediator. Failure had constrained them all to face Him who alone had authority to bridge the gap between a history of shattered lawbreakers, and the Law giver Himself. He could only do that if He had fingers, eyes, ears, a knowledge of his people’s mandate intersected with a heart of compassion.

Handwriting on the wall

You’ve heard the phrase. Do you know the story’s source?

Long ago, during a time of national upheaval, a time of disintegration into mockery, there appeared words written ominously on the public wall. The drunken king, now alarmed, had to bring in a forgotten Hebrew prophet to decode the warning. The decoder, Daniel, spoke boldly, clearly and then was draped with a purple robe (he did not want). The frightened monarch, focus of the warning, within hours lost his kingdom and his life. Daniel’s proclamation remains, echoing through the histories of nations. “God has numbered your kingdom and put an end to it. You have been weighed on the scales and found deficient. Your kingdom has been given over.”

The only handwriting that can cut through chaos comes from the words of God.

Embossing with gold leaf, permission granted by the artist

When God’s words are highlighted, there is still opportunity to attend to them before the demise.

We have a good friend we’ve known for years. Late in his thoughtful life now, he is sensing there is handwriting on our public wall. This man has gone back to the words of God, and become an Orthodox Jew. We dialogue all the time, for we have much that matters in common. Recently I sent him this image, which in its simplicity pictorializes the difference between the words given to Moses at Sinai, and the last word given by Jesus, the Jew. One can’t fully understand the first writing without the decoding grace of the second. This collograph, replete with Hebrew markings, was crafted by another thoughtful wayfarer: Sandra Bowden. The work is titled “Law and Grace.” And as with the frightened king, there is opportunity now. We stand between the giving of the words, and their conclusion. Fear is in the air. Fear, even desperate fear is the soil in which the seeds of wisdom can take root. Grace is the produce, hard-won. Grace speaks out from that very same source.

what in the world is sure

There is a growing disconnect between what’s on the news (alarming, irritating and mind-numbing) and what is on my heart. Like a miracle tonic is the soul-rest I take in from little sure things now: like sunlight, and birdsong, like seeds sprouting and yeast working. And sure things are not all sweet. The words of the prophets give me warning and set me straight when all else is failing. There is, I am experiencing, a better place of peace than the typical two options we are seeing displayed otherwise, and everywhere. You see either:

Angry-at-this-world revolution, whether left or right, there’s a lot of this.
Removal in self-placating denial, or just plain helplessness.

I am observing it all, pondering. My anger has gotten me nowhere (the advantage of years can teach) and helplessness is just a black hole of another name. Denial is a drug that doesn’t work. I am having to look in earnest at a different option. You can too.

Start here: Psalm 19.

The Psalms are each an emotional journaling of a God-seeker. They are honest, some are angry, none are the words of pretenders. In this one, the writer is himself looking out at what is sure. He has to look beyond himself to do that. Like a standing rider in a fast moving train, he has to grab the hand pull.

The writer speaks of the outpouring that is continually available, day and night, there for the reaching.

Then in the second section of this poetic expression, he elaborates on the source of this outpouring and what God’s provision can do in the soul. This is sure for any who will take it in. This is available now. This is pouring into our world at the same time that the other junk we have to deal with is all around us. You still have a choice.

I illustrate this today with a piece I made some years ago. If you wanted to own this you would have to pay me a lot of money, and the work would need to be hand delivered for it is encaustic wax. But you can see and ponder it here for free. It is a response to Psalm 19’s declaration of the outpouring into our ground. I think it is a masterpiece, “after the Master” who said he was doing this communication into our broken places freely “day to day” and “night to night” Such an idea calms my anger, and awakens my dulled spirit. That’s what the truth does, it breaks in. George Orwell observed in another difficult time that “During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” And so it is.

seeing for meaning

Before an exhibition, a young family member asked me, “could you give me some help as to how I ought to understand what I will be seeing?” The humility of his question endeared me to him–that he even cared to know beyond just fulfilling a social obligation. But I wondered whether art, any art, has lost its potential to communicate if folks in front of it remain only bewildered.

The Art Historian H.R. Rookmaaker gave thoughtful overview in his writings as to how Art, as we practice and observe it in the modern and post-modern eras has lost its voice. In the very centuries where artmaking became high Art, celebrated by elites (who alone could interpret it) and enshrined in museums, these artifacts no longer held much common value. Artists were billed from the Renaissance on as geniuses, and high priests of culture. But culture has turned away, and pop-art or entertainment art has taken up the void. Now it is not just the artists who are starving.

Artifact or artificial, is this the only choice? No wonder young viewers feel duped before any display of work.

I think of the beauty of certain sunsets (and some are discernibly “better” than others). These are available to anyone, no museum ticket required, no proper lighting necessary, no label or title needed, no “jurying in”. Does an explanation as to purpose need to follow such fleetingly beautiful expression? The patterns of waves on sand, or birds who fly in some mysterious formation only require some attention. This is popular art that is free, potentially meaningful, hardly artificial, with no hint of cynicism.

I struggle with my own voice in my work, living as I do in such a time of disintegration. I cannot make the work of my hands “say” what I hold in my heart so often. It is not my goal to be literal, but it is a desire to lift the viewer’s eyes. A friend of mine who is a photographer, grieving deeply over the death of her husband is now doing the best work of her career. We talked of this: why are we doing this work, this searching with images? Is it meaningful, is it what we “should be doing”? We got this far in our discussion: this work is an exploration into JOY. This expression is as fleeting as a sunset and as mysterious as a bird’s flight, but it is necessary, if even just for us. I have some ability to look, and to craft. Maybe through the work of my own hands others will see meaningfully also. For this, I keep on.

composing

Recently, I had opportunity to work with artist Christine LaFuente in a workshop. The time and hopes spent to get there, be there, well worth it as she remains a generous teacher. The group of students gathered were each ready to dive in. Chris gave guidelines on composing with accuracy, and since we were all abstracting, that was an interesting conundrum to me. Is abstraction ever accurate? Does it need to be? One of the students is a professional photographer, and she often painted next to me; I loved her sense of humor. But it was really interesting to me how she needed her view to be perfect before she could start, before she would “click the shutter” into a set up. I may be way more sloppy then, but it seems to me that an artist’s job is to take the mess of stuff before me and rearrange into a new imagination of my own making. Back to Christine’s admonition about accuracy. . .

So, I worked on this idea, and gained some new tricks. Here is a shot of an under painting, begun with a grid for accuracy of proportions.

Then the finished result, painted within an hour or two on top of the under painting.

Christine says about this necessary beginning: “get it right at the start, take time there, or you will just be decorating your own mistakes.”

Mary Barton Nees

Conceptual Landscape