About
I seek to let my Art come from and through the high secret place of the most high God, made available to the heart by Jesus Christ; God who exists outside time and space, without a beginning, Isiah 57:15 ''For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place.''
Christ the Son, who was brought forth from God's own bosom from eternity to be the express image of God and the revealer of His Fathering Heart, Hebrews 1:3 ''Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power.''
The omnipresent Holy Spirit of God who brings our entire beings into a living relationship with the person of Christ, through which we come to know God, Romans 8:11 ''But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.'' Colossians 2:10 ''For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power
His Grace, that brings man's will into surrender of God's own being with such unhindered and unwarranted mercy, that man could in no way reach with his natural elements alone; Grace is the good pleasure of God's own heart to unconditionally inhabit every part of our beings, to bring everything that is stored in His heart to us, and to bestow it all upon us with such unwarranted and undeserved favor as if even a decision towards Him is a conviction laid upon our hearts by God Himself. This grace is now made visible to us in the person of Christ and His finished work on the tree as radiant glory, visible to our hearts. Genesis 19:16 ''And while he lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters; the LORD being merciful unto him: and they brought him forth, and set him without the city.''
To achieve this and be one of the few Fine Artists who dares to desire for Christ to be the center of his Fine Art explorations within the contemporary Art world, and turn to Christ as the revealer of life in every image or impression. It is Art exploration that seeks to have its birth from the life that was born before all of life in the heavens and upon the Earth; allowing all colours, imaginative assemblages, filmed metaphorical symbols, prophetic revelations, evoked and integrated themes and concepts; to flow forth from the life of Christ. How can even the intrinsic light of Christ truly fit into the colour wheel or be described? The depths of Art exploration has no end in the riches of Christ.
The question may be asked of me, but did not man know God in creation? To a certain extent clearly, and therefore he is without excuse as to believing there is a God and that creation came into being through the power of the Godhead, as the apostle puts it in Romans 1:20. His eternal power and Godhead are most surely to be known by creation, but that is not what He Himself is. Psalm 19:1 "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows his handiwork," but that is not Himself, that is not God. I might show you one day in a certain building a beautiful picture, and as you stand before it with admiration you exclaim: What a marvelous artist! What conception, what artistic power, what skill with the brush, what a touch that produced such a picture! I turn round and show you an exquisite piece of sculpture that came from the same hand, showing that he could use the chisel as well as the brush. And again you exclaim, What a wonderful man! Yes, I say, but he drinks like a fish, starves his children, beats his wife, his life is a scandal to the whole neighborhood. In spite of his pictures and his sculpture, his moral character is of the very worst kind. Thus, you see, you do not learn the man by his works.
Neither can God be fully known by His works. John 1:18 "No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him." If there be anyone reading this at this moment who supposes that he can learn to know God apart from the Blessed One, depend upon it, my friend, you are profoundly mistaken. God is not to be known apart from the person of this Blessed One, Christ.
Human investigation and experience guided with the human conscience/self will alone cannot go to any depths within the heart of God. However, God does desire man's own being to seek after Him and have a thirst for His life; even though He doesn't need us to because of His grace towards us presented in the offering of Christ. We need to simply look from our hearts and believe. Although, by His pleasure He loves us to seek and thirst. Through the workings of the Holy Spirit create a thirst for spiritual life and shift the sway towards the Son's glorious face, so that we seek after His Son's light with a thirst for the full light of His salvation to be born within us; the only life that can satisfy. So we can only see His Son as the satisfaction for our deep rooted hunger and invite Him as Lord of Life into our beings and hearts, placing our lives on Jesus' shoulders forever. Matthew 5:6 ''Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled.'' Together with our beings, He needs these avenues which He created in His image, the human spirit, conscience, natural heart; in order that He may hijack the will of man into His spirit so His own will can be in full motion through ours, like a current. This happens in an instant moment as if opening our eyes when being born again and the life of Christ now lives in us and flows through us like a current.
To unveil in another way, God needs us to believe upon His Son from our natural hearts so we can then die and be born again in an instant moment like the flickering of light. We then in this instant moment have God's Holy Spirit born with in us; in the very depths of our being and becoming one with our human spirit. Allowing then His spirit, like a current to flow from our beings where He will now live to the natural heart, and this by faith. Ephesians 3:16-17 'I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith...' Once man's will is held in unconscious abeyance into liberation of God's Spirit, the heart is then able to swim into the very depths Christ's own image who is the express incarnate image of God, now made visible to us; seen not with natural eyes, but the eye of ones own heart and being, which have no natural eyes. 1 Corinthians 2:9-11 ''but according as it is written, things which eye has not seen, and ear not heard, and which have not come into man's heart, which God has prepared for them that love Him, but God has revealed to us by His Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who of men hath known the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? thus also the things of God knows no one except the Spirit of God.'' For example, as a metaphor, a dream is an impression left on one's mind when not under the control of his own will; we cannot decide beforehand what we will dream, or what not to dream. Thus, our heart or self-will is really our ''inner being'' and within our inner being is where we act and feel towards the things we will to do. God wants His spirit to flood into our inner being by a conscious decision towards Him and His Son. So then this new life living in our inner being overflows to the natural heart. So to elaborate, I seek to have all my work flow from my inner being where Christ lives within me through the Holy Spirit.
A central theme that runs throughout the practice is a juxtaposition between the two realms of the spiritual and the natural. Exploring the two in contrast, and in a sort of harmony to show the natural splitting and decaying, making way for the spiritual. I seek to unveil the hidden beauty that lies within the spiritual; only to be revealed once the viewer can see through the 'temp-orality' of the natural. Expounding further into truth, any beauty that is innate throughout the spiritual can only be described as... the very substance of Christ; without His light, it is but a vacant space, the very thing darkness is. Genesis 1:2-3 ''And the Earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.'' This theme relates to the grand picture and fulfillment of the word of God being the fulfillment for all things in Christ; showing to the world, light being revealed through darkness and the natural decaying to reveal the spiritual life of Christ. Romans 8:21 '' that the creation itself will also be set free from the bondage of decay, into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.'' The saved Children of God here being the ones whom house the light and then reveal the light. Exodus 10:23 '' They did not see one another; nor did anyone rise from his place for three days. But all the children of Israel had light in their dwellings.'' These explorations run through a multidisciplinary process where this truth is explored as an Art theme. I like to work with a wide range mediums such as, drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, film and photography; with medias such as pencils, charcoal, oil pastels, acrylic/water colour/oil paint, ceramics/clay, and many found objects and materials from recycling centers, restoring the thrown away and old into something beautiful and heavenly; formulating a process where control begins in my hands and then leaves them; marks, layers of colour, accidents with streams of paint, layers of found materials, assemblages formed from the geography of my heart and capturing metaphorical moments that echo from our Heavenly Father's own heart.
''Even though I'm the one creating the work, I want it to leave my hands and mind with a life of its own''
There are many other themes which run throughout my practice; there is never just one focus, it is always changing and growing. The spiritual and natural; light through darkness, is the central theme. The theory of 'The Blurring of Art and Life,' became an area of exploration while I was studying at Art College with the realization that much of my Art was relating to the 'Performance of the everyday.' Exploring how we perform in our everyday roles in society as an act and performance. As humans we feel the need to create and construct our own identity to fit into these roles; how we act with body language, what we do to fit into certain groups, how we adopt cultures, how we consume materialism around us; all this relates to, 'the concept of the self.' This was fascinating to me, because I always felt lost on my own identity and art became an avenue to explore it and understand it; even how society adapts to 'the self.' This is an area that's still changing and developing to this day and will continue especially in the post-modern western culture, which seems to be on way to a collapse of media and material consumption, towards a society of a nihilistic existence.
I explored the self as a facade that we wear in everyday life, constructing the outer self ourselves to appear to be what we think we are and what we want to project ourselves to be. It was a therapeutic exploration and still continues today; I journeyed from performances using the body, exploring memories and traumas from the past, taking on new roles in society and documenting my journeys, and now finding it's place in Christ where I was born again and translated into the light of His heart. Ephesians 5:14 ''So it is said: “Wake up, O sleeper, rise up from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” Now taking this exploration to new heights and places, in the heavenlies; the realm beyond this one, outside the natural, time and space. John: 1-4 ''In the beginning [before all time] was the Word (Christ), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God Himself. He was with God in the beginning. All things were made and came into existence through Him; and without Him not even one thing was made that has come into being. In Him was life [and the power to bestow life], and the life was the Light of men.'' Only through Christ can we awake again to a another living hope because Adam's hope is now dead.
I now see that if 'the self' is constructed without Christ; how I viewed identity before Christ, a construction of words, a uniform to wear in society, a mask that's worn to fit into every part of culture and something we adopt in society to grasp the reality around us. Without Christ, we become but numbers on circuit board without the electricity of life. Just so happens, that by the will of God, Jesus couldn't be numbered in the inn in Bethlehem; so that all those born again from Him are not numbers but living people with light, life, and true ''not acted'' personalities. So now this theme has developed towards exploring how society constructs 'the concepts of the self' without the life of Christ.
