My Father's World

"My Father's World"

12" x 16"

Pastel

Earlier last week I received a phone call from an artist friend here in Omaha inviting me to enter one piece of artwork with his in a collaborative artist show in Lincoln, Nebraska.  My friend described the piece he was entering.  His was a mixed-media work on the seven days of creation from Genesis 1.  This work had won Best of Show in the Bellevue Artists Association Silver Palette Show last fall.  I got to thinking that my cowboy/western/horse drawings wouldn't really theme well with his work.  Thankfully I had done a recent 5" x 7" study in oils of a mountain and river scene from hiking in British Columbia.  

 I had already worked out the composition and value decisions, but wanted to try it in pastels.  So I prepared my support panel with a finish of marble dust gesso and sketched out the composition.

Then I proceeded to bring out the concepts I had in my head.  I was thinking about what I wanted this painting to say.  What was my focus?  What did I need to emphasize?  What did I need to edit out of the scene?  One group of painters that I greatly enjoy studying is the Hudson River School of artists.  This group was America's first major art movement.  They depicted transcendent, light-filled scenes of nature and the wilderness landscapes.  Artists of this group were Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Jasper Cropsey, and Frederic Church.  They influenced a second generation of two very well-known painters of the west, Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran.  So in my work, my desire was to bring that same transcendent light-filled landscape.  I worked on it all day last Saturday and finished around 7 p.m.  I got it framed this week and it is now on its way to the Lincoln show called Visual Voices.  It will be on exhibit there in one of the galleries at the large Lincoln Berean Church until Easter.  The public is able to view the artwork in the various galleries there from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily.

The title for this piece comes from the well-known hymn "This is My Father's World", written by Maltbie Babcock who lived from 1858 - 1901.  It's words were in my thoughts as I worked away applying the pastel to the surface.  

This is My Father's World

This is my Father's world, and to my listening ears

All nature sings and round me rings the music of the spheres.

This is my Father's world:  I rest me in the thought

Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas---His hand the wonders wrought.

This is my Father's world, the birds their carols raise,

The morning light, the lily white, declare their Maker's praise.

This is my Father's world:  He shines in all that's fair;

In the rustling grass I hear Him pass, He speaks to me everywhere.

This is my Father's world, O let me ne'er forget

That though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the Ruler yet.

This is my Father's world;  The battle is not done;

Jesus who died shall be satisfied, and earth and heaven be one.

That's a bucket load of joy, comfort, and great hope shining right there!!

Be brave and courageous!

What's Your Shape?

Griffin

watercolor study

9" x 12"

Last Friday afternoon I had the privilege of attending the Lauritzen Gardens spectacular LEGO Sculpture Show titled "Nature Connects".  New York artist Sean Kenney created the 13 works on display.  Some pieces utilized upwards of 60, 549 pieces of LEGO (the Monarch on Milkweed scuplture).  A life-size sculpture of a kneeling gardener planting a seedling contained 16,383 LEGO pieces.  Very fascinating to see what can be accomplished using LEGO bricks for an art medium.  I do not plan to trade in my pencils and brushes for that genre any time soon, though!

While I was at the Lauritzen Gardens, I wandered down the paths with my easel and pastel sticks, looking for a scene to catch my eye.  The weather was in the 50's F.  So I wanted to be out in nature exploring and exploiting the good temps.  Here is the following study from that afternoon:

Lauritzen Gardens

pastel study

5" x 7"

This drawing was a lot about the trees and how the sunlight was illuminating them.  Trees are favorites of mine.  I love looking at their shapes and unique characteristics.  What a vast variety in leaf size and shape, in branching structure, in fall coloration, fruit, flower, and seed.  One word that addresses the overall shape of a tree is arboriform.  I was awake in Botany class that day!  That led me to thinking about how distinct the shapes of our individual lives are, like the trees, with unique patterns, identities, personalities, body builds, emotions, and intelligences.  Not only physically, but how our whole person has a distinct shape that when your name is mentioned, it conjures up how you are in life.  Just like a tree's arboriform, the sum of our parts is summed up in our overall "shape".  That's what we bring to life.  As  Chris Laszlo states in his book Flourishing Enterprise: 

          We need to be rich in who we are being, not in what we have.  Wealth needs to be measured not by the quantity of goods we own but by the quality of our life experience.

I submit to you that knowing and following Christ brings a richness and beauty to one's life so that the shape of one's life mirrors the "arboriform" of Christ-likeness.  So that is a challenge for myself....what shape am I?  Can others see the beauty of Christ throughout my life, in spite of my inadequacies and failures?  Am I helping people to flourish?  

 Last Sunday night I enjoyed hearing the award-winning European ensemble called The Spanish Brass perform at Dundee Presbyterian Church here in Omaha.  I had to sketch quickly as they kept shifting positions every so many seconds.   Their music was fabulous and their showmanship was engaging!  But not everyone felt the same...as you can see.  My art manikin Michelangelo was caught sleeping on the job!

 pastel study

9" x 12"

oil study of Canadian river

6" x 8"

I plan to use this oil study in a 12" x 16" work in pastel that I hope to finish next week.  It will go to an art show in Lincoln, NE from February through April.

Check out my new available Prints of Originals page!!

That's it for this week.  May you flourish this week like a beautiful, stately tree!!

Be brave and courageous!

Are You Thirsty?

Thirst

Graphite/Charcoal

20" x 12"

Six thirsty horses have waited patiently over the past weeks for me to get the water "drawn" in their tubs.  Finally, quenching their thirst, they gulp and swallow, gulp and swallow in the hot sun.  What struck me as comical was the little colt sneaking under his mother's neck to see if the water in the adjacent tub was tastier or cooler.  Maybe it might even be Pepsi or Mountain Dew!  Or better yet, pure liquid chocolate!

As I've spent many hours working on this composition, I've thought a lot about the topic of thirst.  So here goes:

What are you thirsty for?  Do you sense desire and hunger for something more than what you currently experience?  St. Augustine stated that God has made us for Himself, and that our souls are restless until they find their rest in HIm.  Life offers a variety of ways to attempt to quench our thirsts.  But nothing satisfies ultimately except....God Himself.  We are created in God's image and to find in Him our life's supreme joy and satisfaction.  This summer as I stood at the rim of the Yellowstone River and watched the thundering Upper Falls, I was visually reminded of how thirst-quenching a relationship with God is and of the power of that in

one's life.  Jesus compellingly invites anyone to have their thirst and hunger quenched forever in Him.  He declared that He was the bread of life, that whoever came to Him would never be hungry again, and that whoever believed in Him would never be thirsty again.  And in Isaiah 55 He again invites:  

  Is anyone thirsty?

Come and drink---

Even if you have no money!

Come, take your choice of wine or milk---

It's all free!

Why spend your money on food that does

not give you strength?

Why pay for food that does you no good?

Listen to me, and you will eat what is good.

You will enjoy the finest food.

Come to me with your ears wide open.

Listen, and you will find life.

What a grand invite!  I'll drink to that!!

Go be astonished by beauty this week!

Michelangelo, my little art manikin, decided he had better get on with chores here in my studio wildlife sanctuary and do some thirst quenching before things got out of hand! 

Be brave and courageous!

I Flunked Art Today

Mt. Moran/Grand Tetons

(Small watercolor study)

"Some days are diamonds, some days are stone/Sometimes the hard times won't leave me alone/Some times the cold winds blow a chill in my bones/Some days are diamonds, some days are stone."  So go the words to a John Denver song.  Well. the weather outside is frightful, as another song puts it.  It is cold, bone-chilling cold, and I see from the weather map that many of you are experiencing winter's blast.

And besides the weather issues outside, I've had issues today in my studio, as well.  I did a watercolor study this morning and it just kept going from bad to worse.  I haven't thrown it in the garbage yet, as I'm saving it to see how improvement will look hopefully.  It is so easy to get discouraged in learning to draw/paint but the only anecdote for that is to get back up in the saddle again and keep riding.  It's an encouraging reminder to look at a little cartoon I keep tacked up here in my studio that my son Jacob drew for me:

This cartoon is based on the famous Aesop's fable of the tortoise and the hare.  The moral to the story is seen in the banner "Slow and steady wins the race!"  I love the humor that Jacob adds to the scene with the hare being towed in by hanging onto the tortoise's tail.  We all have growth areas in our lives where it is hard to be patient.  We wanted to be proficient yesterday.  The winding, circuitous road to get from where we are currently to where our goals land us is how the journey just is.  There are no short cuts to somewhere worth going!

(One watercolor study that turned out okay)

Be brave and courageous!

Be Dazzled in 2015!

 Elijah's Work Day

5" x 7"

Pastel study

Welcome to a New Year!  A wide open horizon stands before us.  What possibilities lie ahead?  What unexpected joys?  What unforeseen challenges?  What new adventures? Thinking about the joys/adventures/possibilities parts really revs my engines.  What I'd rather leave off the agenda are the challenges/problems pieces.  But that is where I seem to grow the most.

 I am thankful that God promises to personally go before us and to walk beside us moment by moment.  I like how Luci Swindoll expressed it..."I took God at His word---that He'd be with me and take care of me; that He'd go before me and straighten out the crooked places...something about that choice had a rush in it for me.  An edge.  An excitement.  Each day I couldn't wait to see what would happen!"

Bighorn Sheep study

4 1/4" x 5 1/2"

Watercolor

So...are you ready to be dazzled in 2015?!  Let me share a brief bit of poetry by one of my favorite poets with you to explain just WHY you need to be dazzled:

Good Morning

          The mulitiplicity of forms!  The hummingbird,

          the fox, the raven, the sparrow hawk, the 

          otter, the dragonfly, the water lily!  And 

          on and on.  It must be a great disappointment

          to God if we are not dazzled at least ten 

          times a day.

                                                                    ---Mary Oliver.

                                                                        Blue Horses

This beautiful, created world beckons to us every day to see with fresh eyes and listen with open ears.  So be dazzled everyday of this new 2015 year!!!  It's a great way to live!

                                                                  

Cedar Canyon Near Scottsbluff

5" x 7"

Pastel study

This past August I enjoyed a wonderful hike with my son Joe up into this canyon on the lookout for the Bighorn sheep herd that has been thriving there.  We never saw any sheep, but really enjoyed the time together and the road less traveled.

Pen sketch of one of my favorite dogs...Leo

Oh, yes...while I was visiting my son Joe and daughter-in-law Crystal, I enjoyed lots of throw and retrieve time with the infamous little Papillion dog Leo.  He's the star of the "Leo Diaries".

He steals my heart every time!

Be strong and courageous!