God Repeats Himself

I spent most of the morning working on this.  It's a greeting card, blank inside.  

The verse is from Psalm 62.  There's a bit of a repeating theme here..."my soul wait in silence for God only; from Him is my salvation" ...that's verse 1.  Then in verse 5, "my soul, wait in silence for God only, for my hope is from Him."  And then in verse 6, "He only is my rock and  my salvation."  And then verse 7, "On God my salvation and my glory rest."

Evidently we need it to be repeated!

Longing

"Come Quickly"

8" x  8"

Oil on canvas panel

Oh, how I love a big sky!  For awhile, we lived IN our small town.  Right in the middle, which was very convenient....but I told people we lived in Narnia.  You know, "always winter and never Christmas".  Sure, we celebrated Christmas, but we were down IN THE TREES.  And the snow never melted.  And you could barely see the sky.  I so longed to GET! MY! HEAD! UP!

That's the main motivation for these paintings: my love of a big sky, and my longing for my Lord's return.

"Watching & Waiting"

8" x  8"

Oil on canvas panel

"Maranatha"

8" x  8"

Oil on canvas panel

EVEN SO, COME LORD JESUS!

(Curious about the Narnia reference?  Go read "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" by C.S. Lewis.)

Denver Botanic Gardens

What could be better?  October.  Warm.  Delightfully so!  Free admission.  Sketchbook in hand.  And what was I sketching?  Well, how on earth does a person choose?!  The fodder for artwork is unending.  I finally settled on this:

I have no idea why water lilies capture my attention so thoroughly, but they do!  I have SOO many reference pics in my computer, all waiting to be sketched or painted.  Here's how the sketch turned out:

Colored pencils in my spiffy new accordian style sketch book...there's only one page!  It just folds in on itself and goes on and on and on....so your drawing just keeps morphing!  Love it!

Blown Away

"Blown Away"

10" x  20"

Oil on canvas

Oh, how I love painting with oils!  They blend so delightfully.  They move so smoothly.  They stay workable for so long!  No fast-drying sticky brushes.  It's a delight to play with them again.

As I drove home the other day, the wind was whipping about, and the leaves were flying along in front of my car...and I thought, 'wouldn't that make a lovely painting?'  For this canvas I actually gathered aspen leaves from my yard and brought them in and taped them to my easel (my hubby laughed at that).  We're actually getting RED this year!  That's not overly common with aspen trees.  Reveling in the colors was a gift from our Generous God!!

(Psst....you can make the image larger by clicking on it.)

Genesis Three

"Now the serpent was  more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.  And he said to the woman, 'Indeed, has God said, "you shall not eat from any tree of the garden?"'"  And the story goes on.  Adam and Eve had no idea what they would lose.  God would come to them and say, "what is this you have done?"....and they would realize that they had thrown away everything good, and hopeful, and beautiful.

I painted that loss.  Everything became dark and dismal.  And God became distant.  I love the hope that God speaks, though:

"You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart." (Jeremiah 29:13)  Because of the blood of Jesus, God doesn't stay distant.

From Beginning to End

Quite awhile ago my sister-in-law contacted me and asked me to come paint at a women's retreat while she taught.  Well, of course!  She gave me her initial thoughts on what she might be teaching, and we hashed it out, and then I came up with a line drawing for her approval.  Of course, I HAD to color it in, just like in a coloring book.  Stay inside the lines, now!!

Then, we took a road trip...16 hours on the dotted line!  The canvas started black, with the lines drawn on it in pencil (I did all that at home), and then I had three different sessions to work on it while my sister-in-law taught.

This is the end of session one.  (funny how the lighting made the yellow look oh-so-brilliant in this pic!!  It's not really that bright.)

And the final  product!  I was nervous to the point of shaking for the first 10 minutes of the first session, and after that God was kind and I found it to be FUN.  The red turned out darker than I intended, and I love it. 

When it was all said and done, I loaded up all my junk, left the canvas behind, and returned to my tiny little home.

 Thank You, My Father, for Your Kindness.  Your Faithfulness.  Your activity in my life.

Genesis One

"God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good." Genesis 1:31

I couldn't bring myself to paint a lovely garden scene, with lots of greenery and two naked adults with artfully placed drapery.  Besides, creation is so much more!  More than the initial garden.  More than what I see in my little mountain town.  More than our globe.  The creativity and power of God are astounding.

God says, "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?  Tell Me, if you have understanding, Who set its measurements?  Since you know.  Or Who stretched the line on it?  On what were its bases sunk?  Or Who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?"   (Job 38)  It must have been ASTOUNDING to behold.

Here we go!

Change: a)to make different in some particular b)to make radically different

That about sums it up.

The canvases at my church are changing.  Yesterday morning they had lovely images and pieces of scripture on them.  This morning they were all jet black.  Tomorrow morning (Lord willing!) one of them will begin to show evidence of yet another image, and yet more scripture.  By Tuesday morning it just may be done!

Change is good, right?

Daydreams

I spend a fair amount of time thinking about eternity ... longing for eternity ... wondering how delightful it will be in eternity.  What will worship look like, sound like, with those billions and billions of souls all singing together?  What will it be like to actually BE free from sin?  To actually SEE Jesus?  Just today someone said something that made me wonder: what if the flowers and trees really WILL sing and dance and clap their hands?  What if God has only silenced them here on our broken world, in our broken time?

"Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all it contains; let the field exult, and all that is in it.  Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy before the LORD, for He is coming, for He is coming to judge the earth.  He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in His faithfulness."  Psalm 96:11-13

My Hand

This is what you do when it's starting to get a little bit dark out...when you're uninterested in any of your collection of reference photos...when the satellite dish has been fried due to too-near lightening...and when you really, really just want to hold a pencil:  you draw your own hand.  Something's bugging me about it, but I haven't figured out yet what it is.

More Greeting Cards

I just CANNOT bring myself to go buy a card at the grocery store.  I don't know, maybe there's something rebellious in me! 

 Each of these has the Bible reference on the back of the card (where the manufacturer's mark usually goes).  They're all verses that I love.  The first card I'm mildly troubled about because the colored specks look like sprinkles on a cupcake, which wasn't my intention!  And on the last one, that capital "Y" in "you" looks more like a capital "G".

Oh well.  Even with their foibles, they're still way better than having to go to the grocery store!

Signage

Picture yourself going to a wedding.  They have a lovely spread of food at the reception.  But WHAT IS THAT?  You're not quite sure...oh, wait. They have a lovely sign telling you what the mystery dish is!  It's beautifully printed on a small piece of card stock, perhaps.  So nice.

Well, this wedding is different.  It's outdoors, in the woods, and the food is now labelled on small aspen stumps.  My latest, tiny project.  And thanks to my grandpa for paying for calligraphy lessons eons ago!

(by the way....the house smells FANTASTIC because of those freshly cut aspen chunks!)

My Next Project

Not long ago someone saw one of my paintings at my church, and asked our church secretary who painted it.  I love free advertising!  So a new contact was made....a new relationship begun...God is good.

This is the sketch for what I'll be painting for them.  It will be painted on a wall about 3 feet wide and 8 feet tall, in the tiniest little church imaginable.  Actually, I might be jumping the gun here, because the client hasn't approved the sketch yet!  So we'll just say HOPEFULLY I'll be painting this next!

I had to have the statement radiate.  After all, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the starting point for EVERYTHING, so the words HAD to shout!  I know, it's not Easter, but this truth transcends one day in the spring!  Say it with  me: "HE IS RISEN!!"

In Your Face

Oh, how this guy cracks me up!!  He's on a greeting card, and I'm wishing I didn't have to mail it!!