My first mural

Back in the olden days, when I was just a lad, I hung out at a Christian coffeehouse called The Well. At one point I painted a mural on the wall behind the stage where the singers sang. It was a pastoral scene, kind of like the peaceable kingdom.

The Well recently had a reunion (which I didn't attend for personal reasons). They started a Facebook page and different folks have been putting up old photos of the Well and those people who were a part of it.

Someone posted a bunch of photos of my old mural. I probably have photos of the mural somewhere but I don't know where they are so I was happy to see them again. I am posting them here for anyone who would like to see what my first mural looked like.

Pearls Art Exhibit

Three of my recent paintings have been accepted to the Pearls Art Exhibit. The Pearls Art Exhibit is an annual show held in conjunction with the Elgin Hogeye Festival. The opening is Thursday evening, 22 October at 7:00 and is only up until Saturday, 24 October. This year it is going to be held at Back Forty Chiropractic at 105 W. 2nd St in downtown Elgin.

The three paintings I will have on display are:

The Last Judgment
Joyful Mystery #5
Marian Garden

I hope to see you at the opening!

Marian Garden

Marian Garden acrylic/canvas 30"x40"

I finished a painting today-Marian Garden. A traditional interpretation of the Song of Songs sees the Blessed Mother as the subject. Song of Songs 4:12-15 "[my love] is a garden enclosed...a sealed fountain. Your shoots Form an orchard of pomagranate trees, bearing most exquisite fruit: nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon with all the incense-bearing trees; myrrh and Aloes, with the subtlest odors. Fountain of the garden, well of living Water, streams flowing down from Lebanon!"

I tried to depict an enclosed garden with Mary and Jesus surrounded by the most beautiful flowering plants and a small fountain. Mary is in prayer and Jesus is emjoying the things he made on the days of creation.

Feast day of Guardian Angels

St. Thomas Aquinas on Guardian angels.

113. ANGEL GUARDIANS

1. It is fitting that changeable and fallible human beings should be guarded by angels, and thus steadily moved and regulated to good.

2. St. Jerome, in his commentary on Matthew 8:10, says "The dignity of human souls is great, for each has an angel appointed to guard it." God's providence extends, not only to mankind as a whole, but to individual human beings. Each human being has, by God's loving providence, his own guardian angel.

3. It seems that the office of being guardians to men belongs to the lowest order of heavenly spirits, that is, the ninth order, the order of Angels.

4. Each human being, without exception, has a guardian angel as long as he is a wayfarer, that is, during his whole earthly life. In heaven a man will have an angel companion to reign with him, but not a guardian; no guardian is needed when the guarded journey has been successfully completed. In hell, each man will have a fallen angel to punish him.

5. Each human being has his guardian angel from the moment of his birth, and not, as some have taught, only from the moment of baptism.

6. The guardian angel is a gift of divine providence. He never fails or forsakes his charge. Sometimes, in the workings of providence, a man must suffer trouble; this is not prevented by the guardian angel.

7. Guardian angels do not grieve over the ills that befall their wards. For all angels uninterruptedly enjoy the beatific vision and are forever filled with joy and happiness. Guardian angels do not will the sin which their wards commit, nor do they directly will the punishment of this sin; they do will the fulfillment of divine justice which requires that a man be allowed to have his way, to commit sin if he so choose, to endure trials and troubles, and to suffer punishment.

8. All angels are in perfect agreement with the divine will in so far as it is revealed to them. But it may happen that not all angels have the same revelations of the divine will for their several ministries, and thus, among angels, there may arise a conflict, discord, or strife. This explains what is said in Daniel 10:13 about the guardian angel of the Persians resisting "for one and twenty days" the prayer of Daniel offered by the Archangel Gabriel.

Portrait of YOU as the Good Samaritan

Click here to see a larger image.

The subject of the Good Samaritan has been dealt with numerous times in art by artist such as Rembrandt, Duccio, Hogarth and Van Gogh to name a few. In thinking about my approach to the subject I obviously wanted a contemporary setting in keeping with the parable series I have been working on. I decided I did not want to show the actual good Samaritan in the painting. Instead starting on the left side of the paintings I have the robbers escaping on a bicycle followed by the priest carrying a collection plate full of money, then the Levite, an old hippie, with a tie die shirt and strumming a guitar and finally we see the victim. The idea is that YOU are the good Samaritan being the next person to see the naked beat up man. How will you respond?

To make the painting more personal I painted the beat up man as a self portrait. The man is holding three paint brushes. The robbers can be seen carrying off his clothes and his art supplies. His artist beret is fluttering in the wind.

Violet

Our goat, Violet, died yesterday. She gave birth Saturday to four baby does. We don't know for sure if there were complications but it appears that milk fever was the cause. It is not really a fever but a lack of calcium in the blood that causes a heart attack. My wife called to tell me the news and I left work early yesterday and buried her outside the goat pen.

Violet and Pepper were our first goats. We got them about five years ago when they were a week old. We bottle fed them. Bottle feeding makes goats very tame. Violet and Pepper were like two big, old puppy dogs. My wife would take them out in the field to graze and she would pray the rosary. These two goats became her companions. And they gave birth to some more goats and we kept some until our little goat herd is know up to 16, 15 now that Violet is gone.

My wife has taken Violet's death pretty hard. Grief is a funny thing. It is not something one every totally gets over. And the next occasion for grief is smashed into and added on to the previous grief. Like the Bruce Cockburn song-"You get bigger as you go; Memories like boats in tow."

My wife has had a lot of grief and Violet's death is a reminder of all that she has lost: a husband, a father, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews not to mention things like health, careers, friends and a few hopes and dreams.

The saints teach us that we can unit our sufferings with Christ, as Saint Pauls says in Colossians 1:24 "I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church". It is a mystery that our suffering, united to Christ can help redeem the world.

So, in some way, Violet's death and my wife's grief is a gift to the world being redeemed by Christ. May God have mercy on us all and grant us peace.

Mary and the Burning Bush

From The Burning Bush Triptych by Nicholas Froment

The prophet in the wilderness

The fire inside it was aflame

But never consumed or injured it.

The same with the Theotokos Mary

Carried the fire of Divinity

Nine months in her holy body.



Again it was said of Christ that He is a “consuming fire” (Hebrews
12:29). The fire burning inside the bush is a symbol of Christ and the
bush itself symbolizes the Virgin.

I have been pondering the symbolism of Mary, carrying the baby Jesus in her womb for nine months being like the burning bush that Moses saw.

We learn over and over again from the Old Testament that no person can see the face of God and live. As God told Moses in exodus 33:30, But He said, "You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!" To be fully in his presence is to be extinguished. It is like an ice cube before the presence of a roaring fire.

So how could Mary actually hold within herself the God/man Jesus without being consumed? God had prepared a place for Jesus in granting Mary the immaculate conception. Mary, through the redeeming grace of Jesus, was conceived without original sin and being full of grace continued to live a live free from sin. The purifying fire of God’s presence had nothing to burn away in Mary. She was a vessel prepared beforehand to receive the gift of God’s son. So like the burning burn she is aflame with God’s presence but not consumed.

May she be our example and we too become fire.