Beauty Required

Beauty Required

"Come over as soon as you can," I said to my son. "We can go as soon as you are ready."

The last couple of days I have missed doing my challenge paintings due to paperwork obligations (yuck) and the opportunity to spend a whole day with my adult son (hooray!). I hate missing my painting time, but boy, do I love spending that family time!

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10" x 10" acrylic on cradled panel
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Recently, as I am reading through the Biblical book of Exodus, I have been seeing all of the beautiful and artistic preparations that are being made for the building of the Tabernacle - the place for the worship of GOD - by the wandering sons of Israel. That place was magnificent! I cannot even imagine some of the things described there. 

It makes me think of our day, and the place of beauty in our culture, and more especially, in our places of worship. In culture as a whole, beauty seems to be relegated to physical attributes of 'those certain few people', or else to a spectacular sunset. It seems that otherwise, we mostly value practicality - or maybe money. I am overstating this, of course, but I love to take the time to view the beauty that is around me. I want to be counter-cultural in this way. 

"Beauty often resides in the peripheries of our lives. We walk past such humble miracles..." Makoto Fujimura

There is a chapel that has recently been built on a Christian university campus (Christ Chapel, Cornerstone University) where they invested in beauty as part of the design of a worship space.  I LOVE THIS! I was able to visit, and it is gorgeous.

In order to boost the place of beauty in my work, I have been researching what I find particularly appealing in paintings of other artists, and other genres. I hope to keep pursuing this concept for a few more of these challenge paintings. 

Psalm 27:4 (New American Standard Bible)
One thing I have asked from the Lord, that I shall seek: That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, To behold the beauty of the Lord And to meditate in His temple.