Category Archives: language of imagery

a surprising birth

Today I’m highlighting a piece that popped out rather quickly last November. It was like a sudden birth with little pregnancy, and it encourages me with anticipation. I have it propped in my studio right at eye level where I can reference its effect. In fact, this image is the screen saver on my phone (with apologies to my grandkids). The painting might mean little to most except as a pleasing arrangement of color and strokes. But for me to date, it’s one of the best things I’ve done, and an emblem of where I want to go.

Let me explain just a bit:

When things happen quickly and strongly I am alert and curious. The color palette here was unintended, rather more intuitive, and the subtlety of some of the cool and warm hues in the upper section interests me particularly. If you squint, the pinks, grays and warm whites link together into one predominant value mass. Moreover, the unity in the whole of those lighter hues is probably what gave me an immediate sense that this was something to stand back from even as it was so quickly brushed out. It’s the particularity melting into a surprising harmony that intrigues.

There’s direction in the piece as well, though it’s just a still point in time. There’s a lifting going on that speaks personally to me. The image can’t be tied to any certain locale but clearly there is ground and then atmosphere. So it’s a landscape, and the darker hues are limited to the grounded area, which is a theme of concern in a lot of my work. But, by the palette and the mark making there is something new here also which I find entirely refreshing. In other words, there’s no yanking didacticism going on, no forcing of meaning but rather just a sense of a beckoning call. Do you start to get why has my attention? I was in a duet when making this.

I reflect on this simple gestural work and it reminds me of a conversation that happened 2000 years ago. They were talking about a mysterious birth then too. You can read the dialogue in John’s gospel, 3^rd chapter. And after some very pointed words, Jesus adds rather obliquely: “The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it is going…” He was shifting very deliberately from the direct to the abstract. He was talking to a studied theologian when he said this. The man stayed curious “how can these things be?” That man was being invited to step up into another plane of understanding, to enter the birthing beyond the limits of what he knew. So it is with what I sense and somehow referenced here. T.S. Elliot speaks of this same imagined surprise in the first quartet of a poem “where past and future are gathered”. That’s what this feels like to me.

Abstraction done well (and oh may I be able to continue) is how I can begin to picture that. When I was in grad school, this was this kind of work I wanted to do, but my skill level wasn’t there yet. That was all preparatory. It’s been a good long engagement, toward this very quick birthing.

capturing “it”

I was in the Salvation Army thrift store this week fishing through stacks of old frames, ignoring the pictures. But one small piece started me thinking about why folks make representations and hang them on walls. The prompt was a rather darkish watercolor of a flower stalk. It wasn’t badly done, the artist set it up on paper, selected a muted palette, articulated petals, signed it carefully, then framed it for some wall. I imagine she was proud of it, wanted it seen. Now, I reckon that the real flower stalk was more stunning however short-lived. The panting remains. It’s a token or a signifier of something. What motivated the artist to capture this stalk on a piece of paper? What gave her the impulse to copy what was before her? Was it some kind of sentiment? Or was it something else that would move her to set up and spend time? Is she still alive? Would the painting have prompted a rich memory of a moment? Or was her composition just a thing, a stand alone, made for adornment without any reference?

I muse on this because I wonder about the drive to “capture it” when I am working and when I am thinking about what it is I want to work. It is not representation that moves me. The references, the things I see with my eyes, hear with my ears and am moved by are only jumping off points. To render anything precisely for me misses the point of why I want to fill a frame. To perfectly imitate something on a board presents only a false stand in. It’s a pacifier. For the real material thing I first experienced is way more lovely than the best of copies. There is rather for me something in a glimpse or a suggestion which better captures the mindful “it” so many beautiful moments only allude to.

In C.S. Lewis’ lectures series The Weight of Glory, he uses words to try to explain: “Pictures are part of the visible world… and represent it only by being part of it. Their visibility has the same source. The suns and lamps in pictures seem to shine only because real suns or lamps shine on them; that is, they seem to shine a great deal because they really shine a little in reflecting their archtypes…it is a sign (these representations) and also more than signs for the thing signified is really in a certain mode present”.

The “it” I aim for, what I hope is rendered as “present” here, is the cut-away revealing of something solid. It’s getting the chance with some material stuff to see the gem like exposure planes, the multi facets in common things of earth. This rock wall used to be covered with dirt, but now we can see what is underneath, strong and exposed. It’s also the contrast between illumination and cavernous shadow. It’s in contrast and color planes where forms are distinguished and understood. And for me the “it” is the suggestion of a different dimension that cannot be precisely laid forth on any 2 or 3 dimensional material aspect. Case in point: Jesus prompted his closest followers privately that what they were seeing right in front of them was more than what prior prophets and Kings wished to see.

In other words, even the seeing cannot grasp full import. We need time and thought. The gestures therefore leave you looking, studying, connecting dots, and I hope desiring to apprehend more of what all these beauties are pointing toward.

one sign of coming things

It’s not just the hints in the air, it’s much much grander and it’s in my spirit! “The times they are a changin” Who can plan or engineer these things? Certainly not me! I’ve spent many a frustrated season trying to pull things out of a hat, trying to make things happen, confident in my own chutzpa, only to find the results pretty paltry.

So, I can’t tell anyone what makes magic. Except for this: what the angel illustrated for the prophet Zechariah (who didn’t get the imagery and needed more words:) “not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit says the Lord of Hosts.” Can He get an amen?

This piece has been sitting half finished in my studio for about 10 years? Maybe longer. I keep juggling things around to make room and pieces show up and make me discouraged (“how come I never finished that!” or “what a piece of junk, but the board is good, I’ll just paint over it…”).

I can tell my practice is improving because I am getting bolder and finding better results. There’s no magic in that except perseverance. My visible gray head is testimony of that!

But I am studying Revelation, that most ominous of books, and incredibly finding great hope in it. I know how the story ends and I can see how it is all being choreographed with meticulous thoroughness. Someday I’ll make a study plan of it for others. That is if I live that long. That will be with words on paper, but first come the images. The book of Revelation is chock full of imagery!

The energy and the urgency in the words is what is moving me forward. This is chapter 15, “Moses’ Song and the 7 Bowls” Finished February 26th, 2019. It is 12 x 15″, encaustic wax on cradled panel, with embedded collage, then cold wax mixed with oil color.

a prayer from Moses

Psalm 90

Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations.
²Before the mountains were born
Or You gave birth to the earth and the world,
Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.

³You turn man back into dust
And say, “Return, O children of men.”
⁴For a thousand years in Your sight
Are like yesterday when it passes by,
Or as a watch in the night.
⁵You have swept them away like a flood, they fall asleep;
In the morning they are like grass which sprouts anew.
⁶In the morning it flourishes and sprouts anew;
Toward evening it fades and withers away.

⁷For we have been consumed by Your anger
And by Your wrath we have been dismayed.
⁸You have placed our iniquities before You,
Our secret sins in the light of Your presence.
⁹For all our days have declined in Your fury;
We have finished our years like a sigh.
¹⁰As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years,
Or if due to strength, eighty years,
Yet their pride is but labor and sorrow;
For soon it is gone and we fly away.
¹¹Who understands the power of Your anger
And Your fury, according to the fear that is due You?
¹²So teach us to number our days,
That we may present to You a heart of wisdom.

¹³Do return, O Lord; how long will it be?
And be sorry for Your servants.
¹⁴O satisfy us in the morning with Your lovingkindness,
That we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.
¹⁵Make us glad according to the days You have afflicted us,
And the years we have seen evil.
¹⁶Let Your work appear to Your servants
And Your majesty to their children.
¹⁷Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us;
And confirm for us the work of our hands;
Yes, confirm the work of our hands.

look out

Yesterday in studio I worked up a palette of hues in oil, building from a photo I’d saved of an arctic scene in National Geo. You can see that here if you look closely at my messy table. I mixed up a set of replicated hues, pleasing together, and then added notes of my own with them, before I had any idea what I would do myself with this color grouping.

Then I took several prepared papers, and one rubber brush and started making marks. My angled rubber tool is pretty cool for I can switch easily from hue to hue by just quickly wiping it down. This gives me a brief freedom. I can vary the stroke widths by the angle, and modulate the intensity of the laid down paint so easily that exercises with this tool become play. For me, quick work like this gets better at what is deeply inside me than labored more planned out attempts at perfection.

The artic quiet of the original image had me captivated, the skies in that photo looked foreboding. And that’s maybe why I selected it. The skies outside my window were carrying ominous hints too as hurricane bands are moving our way. But things move slow. And it’s in the slowness where I live. Things that matter take so much time! I ponder this and my soul is impatient to the point of unease. That’s maybe also why quick work is so cathartic to me. And so I purposed to just make marks, to let my arms work it out, to try to outline it, as if prompting a resolve. This work is like prayer, it suddenly occurs to me. It happens only because things are not right. It’s productive, learned and practiced because there is felt need. I’m looking out, but “we’re not there yet.”

The Irish writer Josephine Hart said “there is an eternal landscape, a geography of the soul; we search for its outlines all our lives.” And Jesus praised those who hunger and thirst for the things that matter most. I think this is why I keep articulating the contours of horizon.

“Look for the Pass”

I am delighted to highlight a piece I made this winter which has been selected along with a small collection of other pieces by Dr. Noland, ETSU’s President, for brightening office spaces on campus.

This was made using a brayer for the initial mark making, then sandwiched through an etching press to facilitate the texture. After the inks dried I enhanced the foreground with pastel worked on top.

Narrow views, whether in vertical or horizontal formats, interest me as a way of beckoning the traveler. It’s as if we’re looking through a clarifying peephole, limiting the extraneous. The horizon is often the real point for me, even while the foreground is captivating. In this case, my idea is of lifting the eyes to where that pass-through lies. Then the steps through the tangly foreground know the way going forward.

images before words

The Hebrew prophets: might you be able to name just one? Starting with Moses, there were at least 17 who asserted warnings then assurances of hope before Jesus showed up. Their persistence, heartfelt passion and vivid imagery has long fascinated me. Their unified story is a gold mine. Yet we live in a time now where fewer and fewer people have even minimal awareness of the ancient messages.

There’s nothing new under the sun and such bible-word cluelessness is not unlike the times when some of the characters like Jeremiah and Micah, Hosea and Isaiah spoke out-loud (each tying back uniquely to what had been written down already). But the listeners were not having it. So, Jeremiah was told to make his own body a visual in some stark ways. Jonah became a walking billboard, and Amos recorded vivid pictures prompted by God: “What do you see, Amos?” He was then to visualize it for others.

One of my first jobs out of college was to design visuals, charts and graphics for historical spiritual ideas. I didn’t know I was good at it, just enjoyed it. I also didn’t know that while there came a long hiatus for me from that kind of work (once babies arrived) that the whole culture was moving away from words and needing images. I just kept reading. And like a soup simmering on my stove, images would waft up like the scent of seasons.

So, fast forward several decades to where people get their news in sound bites promoted by image and grabbed by icons. And Bibles are sold with coloring pages. It is what it is. Visuals have the potential to beckon toward understanding (see last post), but many just stop at the signs, blinking blindly.

Several years ago I did a series of small sketches after reading through every page of my Bible. I picked one verse that jumped out to me from each in the collection of 39 Old Testament and 27 New Testament books. Then I worked quickly at recording a summary image for each of those 66. They were displayed for a month at my church. The series was called “Vox”.

I am highlighting these again now, the more vivid ones at least, on instagram and twitter, paying particular attention to the prophets. For their words still speak and are better than the evening news.

Here’s just one from the tiny book of Haggai, 2nd chapter, verse 5:

Look Out

The fields are white, the horizon beckons and we’re keeping our trekking boots on. Some 48 years ago, I heard theologian Dr. Joseph Dillow explain the patterns in the ridges and the valleys of Isaiah’s prophetic masterpiece. It was like being in a biblical glider over peaks and valleys in the histories of nations. The prophet, viewing from hundreds of years before Jesus, saw with distinct clarity what was coming. To a young design student, this uber-view was mind-altering stuff. And we are standing in the midst of what Isaiah further predicted. To quote a secular seer “so let us not speak falsely now, the hour is getting late”*. We know the King is coming — we’ll not lag here in retreat.

The view is grand from the vantage pictured here. I painted this for the lobby of a mission (located in CO) full of other trekkers. Knowing from experience that sometimes in the valleys it’s really hard to see; we need this reminder from the heights. For we have marching orders from the God over history, and we hold dear every one of His promises. Come, Lord Jesus! But not before each one has heard the very good news and is gathered in.

*excerpted from Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower”

not to talk?

A quality gallery marketer published a podcast I listened to just this past week. The teaser? ‘Three things not to talk about (if you want to sell your art)’. Here’s the short version: never talk about politics, religion or sports. This guy is good, and I respect his advice; but the funny part is, I had just that morning posted an opinion piece on my personal facebook page. I decided to leave it there, as there is so much mud in the waters now politically, and the op-ed writer I shared was shining some light on a certain subject. It didn’t take long before another artist friend of mine (who sells very well) posted an alternate view to the article I liked under mine. I appreciated her viewpoint; it gave some important info. But haunting me was the echo of several who’ve instructed me “don’t get political” so, I did the more sober thing and deleted the entire post. Politics has shown its complete unreliability, and so I’ll stay mum on that score.

I’m reminded of advice given my husband and I years ago. We were in our young 20’s, and taking our summer job boss out to dinner to thank him. He was a pleasant man, maybe several decades older than us. We were from the era of campus political demonstrations and new in our spiritual convictions. To us: ‘if you care about someone, you talk about what is most important to you.’ He tried to give us advice (which we did not take): “There are two things you never talk about: religion or politics”. People said something like that a lot in the 1950’s. I remember quietly imagining how boring if conversations could never wrestle with such things.

Now I’m older than that boss was then. Now I am learning new tricks and living in a very different, even more divisive time. And one of those taboo subjects (according the gallery marketer) is what moves me to work! I certainly will talk about what moves my work and my every aim. Life has exposed politics as simply the maneuvers and manipulations of men on other men. And religion of every stripe is simply the same attempted upward. What moves me however is how the Creator of each and every man and woman is still speaking. He enters in.

The advantage I have doing art is that I can “tell it slant” as Emily Dickinson used to say. There is no muzzle on when the work sings with beauty on its own. Makoto Fujimura explains it: “Art is an inherently hopeful act, an act that echoes the creativity of the Creator. Every time an architect imagines a new building, an artist envisions that first stroke of a brush on a white canvas, a poet seeks a resonant sound in words, or a choreographer weaves a pause in layers of movements, that act is done in hope; the creator reaches out in hope to call the world into that creation.” –Refractions (NavPress, 2009), 68.

No deletions have to be considered when the work gently vibrates into even the harshest of times. Art speaks, and best when it is responding to the original initiator. It beckons and invites. And you can walk away without feeling like you’ve been sold something you didn’t want to buy.

The artists are the ones who may be the best at talking now, for as C.S. Lewis said, they are the ones who can “steal past those watchful dragons”.

signs and blindness

Yesterday an artist friend and I viewed an exhibit at Penland having to do with human perception. The artist/printmaker’s aim was to “dislodge humankind’s assumption of its centrality.” Her work was inventive, but left me empty. For, if we artfully (and alertly) remove humankind from the throne of mastery, what is being offered as a guiding replacement? Is that not a concern? I see, and I sense the implications; and I need more.

Most artists would recoil at my desire for a follow up plan. They would say they want to ask the questions, not provide any next steps. I counter, such posing is soberly irresponsible in an era of increasing trauma. The signs are all around us with record breaking hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, famines, and mounting armies. Artists are pretty good at noting some signs of the times, but have a poor track record at managing the seismic shifts. We need more than what artists (or politicians, or academicians) are laying out. So much is dying.

Christian philosopher Norman Wirzba observes that in Modernity, we rendered ourselves the Masters. The resultant cultural mind-set assumes that whatever sense there is in the world needs to come from us, and us alone (for God was dethroned long ago). That explains the dogged insistence that ‘we can still figure this out’, that ‘we can fix it all’; even while post-moderns are at least admitting that we have lost control. Few are looking at much beyond the walls of their own perception.

Blindness has been a human problem since long before Modernity. And Jesus had much to say about it. He knew the people around him (with working eyes, ears and brains) had a perception problem. He loved them anyway. He artfully spoke and performed signs right in front of all in a way that revealed who was actually perceiving. In fact, He said that the signs given by Him then, and in the future that He predicted, would not be grasped by the willfully blind. And even better than a prophet with perfect accuracy, better than any artist with probing questions, Jesus offered the next steps for the only sure way through the chaos. He’s Creator after all; and chaos was, in the beginning, just a working canvas.

artwork: Susan Goethel Campbell, detail of Ground No.5, 2017, Inverted, dried earth, dead grass

to craft

A recent article explored the question “Why does craft matter in a digital age” The insights there are worth a look. Here are some snipets from artists trying to explain: Craft is “a way of thinking”, “beyond the cerebral… and through our hands”, “it slows everything down”, “it’s close to the body”. Japanese glass artist, Yoshiaki Kojiro: “Craft is an event that starts with a physical sense of relationship between materials and people.”

All this and more fascinates me for the Creation account in Genesis 2 has God Himself getting his hands into the dirt, in time, on the ground to make things. Then we are tasked, after His exampling, to make things. It’s in the making that seeing is enhanced. It’s in the time taken and slowed down where relationships are better understood. It’s work, but strangely hope-filled.

Yet conversely, in what we call ‘real life’ we talk of “sound bites” and “visual grabs”, about “fake news” and “photo-shopped reality”. All the while we’re racing past what is real, missing the bigger things worth considering that will last all this.

I have been crafting. I’m working on a large oil on paper piece for a show. If I can get it where I want it, I’ll show it here first, maybe in the next post. I also have been crafting a small book. I pressed “approve” this morning, and soon this webpage will offer it for your consideration. The reason for the writing (and it’s taken 6 long years) is because the One who got His own hands into the dirt moved me to take the materials within my grasp of understanding and see if I could make something of it.

Mary Barton Nees

Conceptual Landscape