Liturgical Art
Mixed Media on Canvas 2021 This work was intended to encourage contemplation of Advent themes.
These hands were displayed in the sanctuary during the Lenten season. The idea for the piece was the result of a discussion with a group of creative people at church; the model for the hands was a member of the church. Collaged into the work are prayers that are related to the Lectionary for that season. (SOLD.)
Mixed Media on Canvas 2021 This work was intended to enhance Easter season at a local church in Loveland, Colorado. 'Now the green blade riseth' by J M C Crum (1872-1958) [altd]. Extract reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
Seven pages of sermon notes on the theme of "Vocation" were displayed at one end of the sanctuary to allow viewers to continue to contemplate the theme of the sermon series.
Part of Psalm 37 is illustrated to allow for longer meditation on the text. The act of drawing this contemplative art can be described as "doodlio divina." Prints of this image can be purchased here:
This piece was temporarily displayed in the foyer of the church to help congregants focus on the Resolutions of Jonathan Edwards. (Edwards was a Pastor and missionary in the United States in the 1700s.)
This small collage was made with the text of a prayer from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.
"The term liturgy is derived from the composite Greek word λειτουργία, meaning a public duty or a work undertaken by a citizen for the state. Today the term liturgy is applied to the public worship of the Church and is generally distinguished from private devotion, which occurs outside of the official community worship. Liturgical art ... has little or nothing to do with beauty. It is not decoration. Liturgical art is a visual aid for worship designed, one hopes, to be an integral part of liturgy. Liturgical art at its most edifying expresses the historic church, her traditions, theology and Scripture. It is not in the category of personal work that seeks to express an individual artist and that artist's point of view. At its ideal, liturgical art is made and used within an atmosphere of prayer, ushering the people of God, and the artist included, into an authentic experience of worship." (ecva.org.)
"The artistic value of a piece of art within the context of worship becomes precisely its value as an aid to worship. The extent to which it aids worship - not drawing attention to itself but instead directing us to the holy - is its primary artistic value in that context." (Bruce Benson, Liturgy as a Way of Life.)
It is a privilege to participate in making art and/or music that can be used within the church or used by individuals of the same worshipping body in order to bring unity and focus - participating in "an action by which a group of people become something corporately which they had not been as a mere collection of individuals - a whole greater than the sum of its parts." (Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World.)