about
As children my brother, sister, and I would periodically ransack drawers, cupboards, and closets all over the house in hopes of discovering goodies from our oh-so-distant youth. But the mother lode was finding treasures from our parents past. Toys, keepsakes, books…they were all fascinating.
But there was one keepsake that I would always go back to: my mother’s sketchbook. In my young eyes the drawings were the most beautiful I had ever seen. The pages were only letter-sized, and I don’t even know if she had drawn the pictures as a child or an adult. I did know, however, that I wanted to draw pictures like the woman I loved so much.
Today my mother would laugh if she heard me describe those simple sketches as beautiful, but they were certainly enough to set me on a path that led me to major in studio art in college and even, at one stage, a career in graphic design.
The other treasure I found was in the attic, where all treasures are meant to migrate for young fingers to find. My dad stored all his old novels up there in crumbling cardboard boxes, and his tastes tended towards science fiction and fantasy. I usually spent hours up there finding the books that I devoured down below.
Those books took me far away from that small town in Arkansas and gave a glimmer of what I could experience interacting with people and places far, far away. I think my love of fiction is the spark that ultimately led me in a five-year journey overseas to live out my Christian faith in four very different countries: Ireland, Holland, Israel, and Czech Republic.
In many ways I’ve come full circle since those days of young discovery. I never stopped my search for treasure, but for a while I forgot about my love for art. I misplaced the sketchbook. But not too long ago, while I was living in Prague, I rediscovered that creative desire, and that discovery has led to a renewed vision to combine my creative gifts with my love for people and my faith in God.
So my new path is leading me back to Europe, this time to Germany, to be in ministry as an artist in Cologne. I want to help artists, both Christian and non-Christian, develop a Christian worldview for approaching their art, to ask the question, “What does it mean to be a creative individual who is a follower of a creative God?”
And most importantly, I want to express my faith in creative ways to the honor of the God of the universe!
Why the Arts?
For centuries the Church was a major patron to the arts in Europe, and even now it has started to recognize the need for competent, creative, and relevant art to illustrate Christian truths that words cannot. We live in a media-saturated, visually-driven world: a prime time for artists to bring the message of hope and life!
But art and artists have not always been held in high regard by conservative Christians, and many artists—both Christian and non-Christian—feel misunderstood and disregarded by mainline religious groups. My desire is to reach out to those artists and bring the light of Christ into the darkness of Europe through creative outreaches and Christ-centered, culturally relevant media.
|