Sunrise

South Florida, May 10, 2012

So, here I am on the beach with camera and iPod just before sunrise. In the earphones I am listening to Giulio Caccini – Ave Maria.* In the southern sky a thunderhead makes dull flashes in its hoary depths. Just north of east, the clouds are fringed with silver and gold. First, I pan slowly from south to north and back again making video. Then I work with the camera which is mounted on the tripod so I can immobilize it. I set the camera for delayed shutter using f 25 at ISO 100, causing a slow shutter speed that blurs the surf but makes the clouds crystal clear. Second by second as I shoot more frames, the glow brightens as rays strike out across the sky. The sun’s rim rises above the cloud’s edge. Ocean and sky are filled with brilliant light. The clouds are lost in the glow. The iPod and camera moment is over, so I sit down now, relaxed and enveloped in my own glow. The beach is my church. 


*I listened to as many recordings of the Caccini Ave Maria on You Tube as I could, this one was actually one of the best though least played. So much for the discriminating Web public.

"Out Clean Safe Wat" - Small Distressed Works

"Out Clean Safe Wat," Mixed Media Distressed Painting (8" x 8") July 12, 2011

These works are conflicted.  By that I mean that the accidental quality of the distressed painting technique conflicts with the compulsive need for order demonstrated in the crisp clean straight lines and the gridded presentation of interrupted text.  At the same time, the conflict works for me because all “The Waterworks,” are about the perfection in the natural order of our world, and the destructive process that man is imposing on it.

This is one of many small 8” by 8” mixed media distressed artworks produced in the past 2 years.  The small size enables me to get them out the door at a reasonable price ($125.00) including the sixty-five dollars spent on the framing.  They are part of the larger body of work that includes pastels, mixed media distressed paintings, and digital photo montages, “The Waterworks.”

The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven: A Metamodern Position

Sunrise #2, "Like a Prayer,"(32" x 40") Commissioned March 2011

I occasionally write about my religious/spiritual belief system because so many of my fellow Christians have become exclusive based on an evangelical institutionalized approach of Church to Bible.  Unfortunately, that exclusive evangelical form of Christianity leaves the rest of us out in the cold. It shouldn’t matter, but I am defensive about that exclusion. 

Having been a “Boy Who Came Back From Heaven” myself, I have a reference point from which to view the best selling book about a six year old child who had an out of the body experience. * I posit that Alex, the boy in the book understood that experience based on the teachings of his parents and his church, as do I. I wasn’t quite as young as Alex when I had my out of the body experience – I was fifteen at the time, and I chose to keep the experience to myself because in 1959 I thought that none would believe me including my religious parents and our Northminster Presbyterian Church family. Actually, the teachings of our church varied significantly from the contemporary Twenty-first Century return to fundamental eschatology. Instead, the concentration was on a Modernist (1950’s) understanding of Jesus’ promise to his followers. That understanding was based on love and inclusiveness, and we were taught to disregard the racial prejudices of the day. We were also taught that our relation with Jesus Christ and to God should be deeply personal, held close to the heart because it was not of this world. Instead, we should demonstrate our belief in God, Jesus Christ, and the church through our good deeds, and not so much by talking about our faith as I am doing here. Our relationship with the church included a strong admonition against involvement with matters of state as well as the understanding that the state must avoid involvement with affairs of the church. That prescription was based on Matthew 22:15 in which Jesus said, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's.” But I digress in order to explain that my interpretation of the out of body experience differed greatly from Alex’s.

As a six-year-old Alex heard and saw so many things, including angels, deceased relatives and friends, even an unborn sister. As a fifteen year old I did not see or hear anything because I was not in the body. I was spirit and with the spirit. I knew so many things in ways that transcended the senses and the flesh. I did not see angels, or deceased relatives. There was nothing other than the knowledge of God. At the same time I knew that I must return to my physical existence. God told me without speaking that there were things I must do on earth, and I had the feeling of rushing back though, there was no time or place much less an actual sense of motion. I awoke perspiring and sitting up in bed. I was shaken because I had experienced something I, personally, had no esteemed right to experience. However, that night and over the many years after I have had insights based on my experience of God. The insights while they do not directly contradict Alex’s are quite different from his. I will list three here.

I. Personhood is of this earth. It is not something we bring with us. We come into this life as close to God as we will ever be. We are named by our parents, and grow in the understanding of our individual person based on their precepts and teaching. Gradually we grow in our self-awareness based on the teaching of the social group around our intimate family, and finally of the larger culture beyond. Unfortunately, the knowledge imparted here on earth (the symbolic apple of Genesis) leads us away from God. Jesus had to go into the desert and suffer the devil to shed the teachings of family and culture as much as possible in order to be ready for his ministry. His understanding was that he was not the son of man, but the Son of God. And so, when we eventually return to God, we give up the things of this earth, and leave personhood behind.

II. Jesus was not exclusive. I know fundamentalism teaches that in order to be accepted into the kingdom of heaven one must accept Jesus, and those who do not, cannot go to heaven. However, I believe that Jesus - based on the inclusiveness he demonstrated in choosing his disciples and followers - if living today would say that we are all God’s children. And, based on my out of body experience, I know that beneath my many faceted and layered personhood there is the original bit of God that I brought with me into this world. I do not experience if often, but sometimes I find God when I pray. And, God finds me unexpectedly when I see absolute goodness in the behavior of others, no matter their particular religious affiliations and/or spiritual beliefs.

III. I know that my artwork is based on a God given gift, an accident of birth if you will, and that no matter what I create it is always an expression of the love of God and Jesus Christ.
From time to time I will list others of these insights in my journal, and as always I will indicate their presence in the artwork I make.


Note *

The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven, Kevin Malarkey. Carol Stream, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers (2010).

Thunderstorm

The painting finished
 Five years ago
 “It can’t be,” you say.
 “Oh, but it was.
 You remember that evening,” I say.

 We sat on the Intracoastal at sunset, Looked toward the ocean
 To see giant towers –
 Smooth and round, mounded Sky miracle,
 Glowing gold and orange with Diamond flashes of charged sparks.
 Gaea was throwing a temper tantrum out toward the Bahamas.

 You and I, that second year -
 Of a new life shared together,
 So lucky to have retired
 Before bubble burst
 And that storm
 Tore through the nation
 Man made destruction
 By Capitalist speculators
 Bankers and Idiot builders.

 Lightning and thunder
 Mother of man
 Wearing her electrified cloud crown.
 Lightning and thunder,
 Man wearing his dunce cap -
 Thank God we had the luck,
 Avoided their blunder.

 “We’ve never won a thing,” I say.
 “Oh but yes we have,” you say.

 Oh, but it was
 Five years ago
 That I painted
 “Thunderstorm.”

South Florida Atlantic Sunset #2

The sun goes down behind you when standing on the Atlantic in south Florida. Never the less, the soft gold, salmon and yellow that gild the waves and clouds are quite spectacular, so much subtler than the intense brilliance of our sunrises. Upon revisiting this 32” x 40” pastel painting from 2007, I am interested to note that the grid system I employ is quite visible through subtle changes in color. I hadn’t noticed the color variations at the time I made the drawing based on two digitally merged photos. However, I have since begun to work only in the late morning and early afternoon when white light is the most intense because I am increasingly unable to distinguish subtle color variations as I age. At the same time as unlikely as it might be - if I am ever noted as an artist of some small importance - this visual error will perhaps make the work more valuable. Meanwhile, I keep doing the work because I must - a gift is never to be squandered no matter how small or unimportant it may be.

Time

There is never enough of it, and as I age I become more and more aware that I may be running out of TIME. This digital montage expresses the feeling I have that time is a spinning vortex and that we each are caught at the center, right above the pulled plug. Of course, one’s immanent demise by stupidity, disease or accident is always possible at any age. However, I also know that the divine spark at the center – not God’s special gift of identity in this world - returns sans ego to God. Thus, that which is important to me here will not be important when I return to God. Still, the disorienting fear returns when I least expect it.

Gulf Stream Daze

Northern Palm Beach County beaches are closer to the Gulf Stream than any other beaches in Florida. Typically it is about 3 miles from the beach to that warm current. However, some days the stream must be lapping at our sandy shore because the water turns many shades and tints of brilliant turquoise blue, some milky pale, others deep blue-green, and every color between. The water looks as though it is lit from within. On such days, I can’t pull my eyes away from the water, and I have trouble leaving the beach because my artist’s eyes and heart are so filled with joy. Here I’ve put together a short two and one/half minutes of images from two of those “Gulf Stream Daze.” Once again, as I view the video through Blogger, it stops motion. It is best viewed by going to You Tube and viewing it directly.