Brenda Stichter, artist

The Weary World Rejoices   These three Christmas paintings started out with a gold background and then words from Hebrews 1:3 And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high . From the very beginning, I wanted to use color and the quality of the paint to communicate, so I chose my palette carefully and started slowly building layer after layer.  Of course, I chose a metallic, iridescent gold paint as the first layer, representing God, as I often do. Next, I really enjoyed manipulating the different letters in the verse layer to try to make the lettering "font" express meaning, even though this part of the painting is not seen. It is very easy to lose focus or direction in the midst of painting, but by building layer by layer with the concept at the forefront of my planning, I "trust the process"

Long Lay the World Yesterday was unusual for a Monday. Usually I spend Mondays catching up after the flurry of weekend activities, organizing my painting time, entering contests, marketing, answering emails, and so on. This time, I had to plan, do paperwork for, and drive to a competition venue right away in the day. It turned out to be a good start to the day, since it got me back in the saddle, so to speak.  This year has been a different one, too. I would guess that almost every person reading this email can look back at this year and say the same - it's been an unusual year. One of the things that has had a big impact on me and mine is the cancer that my dear sister-in-law is fighting. She is a very important part of the work places where my Beloved Husband makes a living for us, and these places are really suffering with her absence. And because of that, the weight on my BH has been extra heavy, and it has been heavy to me too. (I would greatly appreciate your prayers for her

A Thrill of Hope "Here come the French horns!" "Look at how fast the strings players are moving their fingers on those parts!"  Those are phrases that I suspect my longsuffering family has heard me say each time they have accompanied me to a concert.  Well, last night I attended a Christmas concert by the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, and I loved it! As is often the case, several of the pieces were songs that I had played in Christmas concerts when I played clarinet (including the bass and contrabass clarinets) in high school and college. I know and love every note in some of those compositions.   There was a vocalist in the concert, and she was a pleasure to hear, too. She was equally at home with pop and jazz styles, and with classical songs. Her performance of O Holy Night brought me to tears. I have never especially liked that piece, but the complexities of the melody really stood out to me at the concert, and then I also began to pay attention to the poetic turn of