Tag: Art

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Simon Helps Jesus Carry the Cross

Simon Helps Jesus Carry the Cross
Oil and gold on canvas
30″x20″

My closest artist friends and I were a part of the Art & Faith Life Group. One year, 16 of us decided to create our Scriptural Way of the Cross. For this project, I chose to do Way #8: Simon of Cyrene Helps Jesus Carry the Cross.

But, as usual, I needed the right model. My son Jonathan worked at Starbucks at the time, and through him I met Oliver, one of his long-time customers. I shared the story of the Encounter Gallery and my idea for this next painting. It turns out that Oliver knew the story well and said he would be my Simon of Cyrene. He even agreed to change into a suit & tie and meet me at our church where I knew I could borrow a large cross. Then, as my friend Andy carried the front, Oliver carried the back end of that cross up a hill many times while I took pictures.

WestWind Christian Church, Keller TX
Maundy Thursday 2025

Simon of Cyrene did not volunteer his service for Jesus. He was forced to serve. But, he did it. 

We might think that this was just an accident, because he was somehow noticed by the soldiers. But I think he was noticed and singled out by God, who used the soldiers to pull Simon forward.

However Simon did not shrink back when called – even forced – to serve. I’m sure that a direct order from armed guards was quite convincing. But he did not complain, he was not too proud to carry a cross for a convicted criminal.

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Disciples Serve the Five Thousand

Disciples Serve the Five Thousand
Oil on canvas 24″ x 18″

This painting began after listening to my friend Takiyah tell me about the gospel story that most resonated with her. She described in detail an evening when she was young, and her mother was crying because of their lack of food. Unexpectedly, to her at least that evening, God provided. That was the first time that Takiyah knew that God was present and that she could talk to him. She talked about the abundance of God and how he has constantly provided in so many ways throughout her life, and that was the reason that Jesus feeding the 5,000 was her favorite gospel story.

I imagined Takiyah as one of the followers at the front of the crowd that day, who saw the fish and loaves multiplying, pitched in and helped deliver the food to all the folks on the hillside. Her contemporary clothing and the modern dishes are my way of imagining what it would look like if this happened again today. It brings the story into the immediacy of now.

Takiyah’s story is one of my favorite evidences of the power and abundance of God. I was invited to share this story in a message to Midway Hills Christian Church in Dallas a few weeks ago. Eight of the Encounter Gallery paintings of saints impacted by Christ are exhibiting at Midway Hills during this Lenten season. We retitled the painting as St. Takiyah Serves the Five Thousand for this exhibit as we know that all who trust in God are truly saints in His eyes.

March 23, 2025 at Midway Hills Christian Church

The church members did a wonderful job of hanging the five paintings in the sanctuary and three more are just outside in the gathering space. It was an honor to speak on the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand and God’s abundance through the eyes of Takiyah.

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The Healed Paralytic

The Healed Paralytic
Oil and 23k gold on canvas
18″ x 24″

This depicts the well-known story from Mark 2 in which the paralyzed man is carried by 4 friends to get him in front of Jesus. But the crowds have pressed in from all sides. These friends are the heroes of the story, humanly speaking. Even though they must have been exhausted, they didn’t give up. After their way was blocked, they persevered and found the stairs to the roof. They carried him up the stairs, removed the tiles in the roof, and lowered him down through the hole.

Then Jesus performed 3 miracles.

The idea behind the halo is borrowed from the pop-art print “Explosion” by Roy Lichtenstein. As I thought about the paralyzed man, it’s interesting that we don’t know what he thought about what was happening to him. He did not speak during the entire story, even after he was healed. So, his halo is one of “surprise and wonder”. He must have been shocked to find himself actually standing on his own two feet. As that is happening, his mind “explodes” with realization.

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At Redeemer Bible Church

Encounter Gallery paintings are hanging this summer at Redeemer Bible Church in East Dallas. A number of families and folks from St. Bart’s Anglican Church, which is currently co-located there, also stopped by with their children to look at and talk about the paintings and their stories.

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Cerealism Collage

Ceralism collage

There’s something reassuring when working with scissors and glue. Not only familiar, but also easy and fun. For me, there are fewer pretentious thoughts to making great art and lots more smiling and fun. It never fails when we’ve set up an art-making night that everyone gets busy and I just stare at whatever materials we’ve collected and all my great ideas just fly away, It feels like the everyone else is moving on and doing their thing and I am completely out of ideas.

More ceralism.

Most of the materials we were using were from cereal boxes saved for this purpose over the last few months due to our recent collage experience with Michael Albert. The colors and font designs are fantastic and probably the results of millions of dollars of advertising campaigns. The cost is basically nothing, and it’s keeping some packaging from going straight to the dump. Ok, so it’s just a little bit of packaging that we’re temporarily keeping from the garbage, but it’s a good feeling to recycle even a little bit. It’s especially a good feeling to make something fun and use basically no money at all in it.

Lurking Desire

Here’s what I finally came up with. It’s a sort of psychological portrait of a small part of our marriage. It’s also using what was available and not being fussy about it. The pepperoni pizza bird on the left is me, the popcorn bird is she. It would have been more accurate if my bird had been made of fried chicken, but a suitable pic was not available. The popcorn bird is entirely accurate. My lovely wife loves popcorn. It’s the go-to snack while amazon prime binging.

Intense discussion

I love this picture. It’s a bit out of order. We almost always eat, and talk, and pray together before the art-making. The spot on the couch by Phil is occupied by Wendy who is right there skyped in on Melissa’s cell phone which was pretty cool. The conversation that I remember most about this evening is the idea that we have to keep taking risks and focusing on truly important things. Whether it’s with new art-making ideas, new relationships, or more time spent praying, reading, and applying scripture to our lives. Someone said that we need to rid ourselves of those time-consuming activities with which we are pre-occupied and move forward with the vital things. And stop worrying about whether or not we and they will be accepted.

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Twisting Trees with Mac Browning

Terri, Norma, Sara, and Melissa twisting away.

At Art and Faith in July, Mac Browning showed us how to take a loop of wire and sculpt a twisted-wire tree. I’ve admired Mac’s beautiful trees many times and it was very interesting to get a feel for what goes into one of his creations by trying to make my own. Mac was thorough and patient and getting started was easy. However, the wire twisting itself was not easy. It takes a combination of strength and dexterity to get what you want. It always gives me a great appreciation for what another artist does when I try a new technique for the first time.

Tom, Melinda, Sara, Melissa, and Norma focusing on the work.

Sometimes making art requires intense thought. When I’m painting a portrait, I have to concentrate completely. If I zone out and begin thinking about something else, I make color, value, and composition choices that just don’t make sense and have to be re-worked and fixed and it wastes a ton of time. It’s happened many times. It’s nice to have something that is not quite like that. Maybe Mac has to concentrate and not lose focus to make his trees, but for me, it was nice to work on something and carry on a conversation at the same time.

Mac showing how it’s done. Sara and Melissa contemplate the next move.

Art & Faith is on the 2nd Saturday of the month. We eat, we pray, we make art.

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The Texture of Light

Artists at play. Sara, Denise, Wendee, Robert, Rebecca and Lindy. (Cr. Russ Reed 2019)

Art & Faith met Saturday evening and as usual shared a wonderful meal and caught up on recent life events.  We also discussed the meaning of Jesus’ scribbling in the sand and response to the woman caught in adultery and we prayed together.

Denise Hohulin gave a wonderful and unique photographic presentation on The Texture of Light.  She passed around a number of photos that were so interesting. I had been looking forward for some time to see how she set these up.  Denise only uses a few hand held lamps, or an open window to let in the sun for the light source. Then she uses a number of glass vases, champagne glasses, bowls and other objects to get these shots.  She showed us how to manipulate the light source and the glass vessels to achieve some remarkable patterns and textured surfaces layered on textured surfaces. .

The Texture of Light by Denise Hohulin

It was interesting to see how the smallest, most infinitesimal movement in the glass led to completely different and unexpected patterns. We played around and came up with some novel approaches to creating textured shadows on surfaces and walls. It was also fun to imagine an exhibition of light, darkness and shadows and what might be required to make it work. Most of all we gained a bit of insight into Denise’s creative mindset and catch up with her latest work.

Textured light patterns (cr. Rebecca Prince 2019)

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At the UTA Hotshop

 Jon at the furnace.

Art & Faith was at the UTA Glassblowing Hotshop last Saturday evening. We received a very special invitation to watch Jon Reed and friends do what they do with hot glass.  They stretched, formed, textured, blew, shaped, and reheated their glass countless times. The results were 3 gorgeous vessel created from initial blobs of molten glass.  

Watching glass blowers is better than a movie.  It’s a live performance with suspense, plot, drama, choreography, and great characterization. The final reveal can be shocking. We were privileged to watch 3 artists at different stages in their craft form and blow glass.  When one artist was on point, the other two were busy helping behind the scenes with numerous tasks. I’ve watched videos of glassblowing before but did not appreciate the many activities that were happening “off-screen” which were vital to the success of the project.  It is definitely a team sport.

Then we enjoyed some excellent pizza at Old School Pizza and Suds which is its own form of team sport.

Thanks to Emily Reed for these great pics.

The actual blowing of glass.

The final form.

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Blackpowder Self-portrait

Art & Faith met recently for black powder night.  Okay, we didn’t actually use real black powder.  That stuff is even more dangerous than what we used, which was synthetic black powder from the local sporting goods store.  Even so, it’s incredibly difficult to find.  Gun stores don’t carry it.  I called 16 gun stores in the southern Dallas cities looking for any kind of synthetic black powder.  Only one thought she might have some in a warehouse if I could wait a week.  I couldn’t, since it was already Friday, and we had Art & Faith that Saturday evening.

So, we finally located the synthetic black powder – thanks to Veronica.  She’s one of our artists and she loves to use black powder in her artwork.  It’s always handy to be friends with women who know exactly where to get black powder!

It is very therapeutic to use fire.  This technique uses fire to draw.  It felt primal, and earthy, and good.  Plus, there are some real meditative moments when you carefully shape and shift the powder on the board before lighting it up.  There are lots of videos online of folks making amazing drawings with black powder.  Watch them for inspiration.  But, it is definitely a whole lot more fun to do it yourself.  Whatever you do, don’t use the actual black powder if you happen to find any.  My friend Jason, who has done a lot of black powder shooting, tells me that it is very, very dangerous.  What we used was not so much.  But, it’s still fire.  And it’s still cool.  Some day I’ll go back and finish the self-portrait.  But, we had a great time and made some great memories.

As always, be safe.   Don’t ever do this indoors.  Always wear protective eye-wear and gloves!!!

Art & Faith.  We eat, we pray, we make art.

 

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Recent Work May 16 2018

The Confessor (self-portrait)
Oil on canvas,
30″ x 24″

This is my entry into this year’s Southwest Dallas Arts Festival which had the theme “Healed!”.  In connection with spiritual and physical health and healing, I’ve been thinking about James 5, especially the two “one another’s” in verse 16.  This seems to me to be encouraging confession among all of us “one another’s” as opposed to confession to a priestly class.  This work was made thinking about that idea.

The Confessor and The Listener
Both Oil on canvas
Both 30″ x 24″

The painting on the left is a self-portrait, painted in late April.  The painting on the right is my friend Paul and was finished around 20 years ago.  I keep some of my older paintings in the stairwell in our home, so I see them every time I go up or down, which is many times a day.  I have great memories of painting “Paul”, because my first art teacher and mentor was very enthusiastic about the unusual composition and how it turned out.

I think that Paul is listening to something that is very troubling.  I imagine him to be on the receiving end of a confession, so he’s a perfect “Listener”, to my “Confessor”.  That’s why I hung the 2 paintings in the festival exactly like this. It was also interesting since they were done so far apart.  They are speaking to each other in a spiritual way (confession), but also across a couple of decades.  The painting of me turned out pretty intense.  I seem to be staring down my friend Paul, daring him to respond to my confession.  But after I finished I reflected that confession itself, to our chosen “one another“, is a very intense and frightening idea.  Perhaps the withering glare is somehow appropriate.