"Christian art is by no means always religious art..."

Here is an excerpt from Francis Schaeffer's essay, "Some Perspectives on Art:"


Christian art is by no means always religious art, that is, art which deals with religious themes. Consider God the Creator. Is God's creation totally involved with religious subjects? What about the universe? the birds? the trees? the mountains? What about the bird's song? and the sound of the wind in the tree? When God created out of nothing by his spoken word, he did not just create "religious" objects. And in the Bible, as we have seen, God commanded the artist, working within God's creation, to fashion statues of oxen and lions and carvings of almond blossings for the tabernacle and the temple.
We should remember that the Bible contains the Song of Solomon, the love song between a man and a woman, and it contains David's song to Israel's national heroes. Neither subject is religious. But God's creation -- the mountains, the trees, the birds and the bird's songs -- are also non-religious art. Think about that. If God made the flowers, the are worth painting. If God made the sky, the sky is worth painting. If God made the ocean, indeed it's worth writing poetry about. It is worth man's while to create works upon the basis of the great works God has already made.
This whole notion is rooted in the realization that Christianity is not just involved with "salvation" but with the total man in the total world. The Christian message begins with the existence of God forever and then with creation. It does not begin with salvation. We must be thankful for salvation, but the Christian message is more than that. Man has a value because he is made in the image of God and thus man as man is an important subject for Christian art. Man as man -- with his emotions, his feelings, his body, his life -- this is an important subject matter for poetry and novels. I'm not talking about man's lostness, but about his mannishness. In God's world the individual counts. Therefore, Christian art should deal with the individual.
...
Christian art is the expression of the whole life of the whole person who is in Christ. What a Christian portrays in his art is the totality of life. Art is not to be solely a vehicle for some sort of self-conscious evangelism.



There is much in this essay (or pamphlet, rather: Art & the Bible) that I would love to write down and share with the masses, but that would probably infringe upon some copyright law or another. If you're interested in what else he has to say, I recommend getting a copy of it because so far as I can tell it's Scripturally accurate rather than depending on Christian-culture-trends. It also sheds some light about where art is actually brought up in the Bible, in all of art's varying forms. It's worth a read.

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On an unrelated note, there are many things that could be said about life and art right now and once again I'm in a place where I have to take a deep breath. School is starting again soon which means my lull of a summer ought to be amped up with meeting new people, mentoring students, and preparing discussion group material. Because of certain circumstances it also means that I've been tense lately about how everything is going to pan out financially for my husband and I. However, God provided a beautiful picture for me the other day as I went outside to read the essay mentioned above. Next to the bench I decided to claim there were these short plants with little purple flowers with sparrows hopping around them. As I watched, the sparrows would check out the purple blossoms, hop up, and pluck the petals right off if not the whole flower. I couldn't figure out what they were doing for a few seconds but realized they were eating the flowers. Now, I don't actually know a lot about birds so I didn't know that they even ate flower blossoms. The whole scene playing out before me was encouraging because it was a vivid picture of God providing food for the birds of the air, as described in Matthew chapter 6.

Other than this, life has been well. Artistically, not much has been going on although I recently was challenged to start and finish a drawing in a limited amount of time because I wanted to reach a deadline for a magazine. It turned out well and it also forced me to use a medium I haven't used in a while: pastels. Now before you start thinking of bold colors or soft drawings of flowers or lakes or something, my use for pastels is to more or less color the paper and through pens and erasing I make the drawing. I'm sure this technique is called something but I haven't a clue what it is. I just know it was a 5 minute exercise employed by a drawing professor in college. I've since started another drawing this way and hope to have a better idea of where I'm going with it soon.

When I get a chance, I'll post pictures!