June 30th, 2013

I have been working on this old forgotten barn today- on a Sunday. I try to think of the spiritual aspects of what - and why- I am painting or sketching at the time I am doing it, and what, if any, value could the finished piece hold for someone else?

Why are some of us so taken with nature? And what relationship does my artwork have with that? When I see a beautiful bird or majestic tree, I immediately want to know these things better and interact with them somehow through my artwork.

I recently read a wonderful excerpt written by the great C. S. Lewis and it seemed to sum it all up for me today:

By C. S. Lewis, on Wanting More:
“Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise.

“At present we are on the outside… the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the pleasures we see. But all the pages of the New Testament are rustling with the rumor that it will not always be so. Someday, God willing, we shall get “in”… We will put on glory… that greater glory of which Nature is only the first sketch.

We do not want to merely “see” beauty–though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words–to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.

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