God’s Great Gallery

 

 

Really, no other gallery matters does it?  All the art work I do can go ignored on this earth if that is the way it is to be.  But I am closest to God when I am painting.  Because when I paint, I think, I pray, I meditate on things above.  I ask God to help me as an artist, as a person, to show me what His purpose is for me, to use me to glorify Him in some way.  The only way I can even imagine is through my art, so that’s the direction I am taking.

If He chooses to give me another way, a better way, then I have to be ready.

 

As I was working on trying to improve this painting, I was thinking about what I would like my life to be about.  This is what I came up with.

 

My paintbrush is my heart,

my imagination, my palette,

my purpose is God’s will,

my prayer, to glorify God,

my goal is to spread His Word,

my destiny, I will exhibit some day in God’s Great Gallery.

Written by Teresa Haynes Johnson

 

And so I plopped it right here on this painting to show the world how I feel and who I want to become.

 

I hope you enjoyed my artist thoughts today.

Art: Put Reality Into Your Paintings

 

These butterflies are real!  Oh yes, they are.  Because I love the butterfly so much, when someone finds one they give them to me.  Sometimes they are whole and sometimes not.  But they are always lifeless.  What better way to bring them back to life and give them another chance to grace us with their beauty, than to put them in a painting true to their surroundings.

This wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be.  Although first dissappointed, it became apparent that they were going to need a little touch up.

I began by painting in the background on my canvas using acrylic paint and then painted the flowers and the grass.

Using an exacto knife and tweezers the wings were removed from the body.  Afraid the delicate wings wouldn’t take much moving around, I used the knife and tweezers to place them in different positions on the canvas to decide where they would be most appealing.  Using Plaid Matte Mod Podge with water mixed in it, I applied it to the area on the canvas for the first bottom wing.  Carefully moving the wing I placed it on top of the Mod Podge.  It was all more forgiving than I expected, but still working very carefully, I pressed gently with my fingers, then applied a coat of Mod Podge on top of the wing.  Each wing was done this way.  One wing at a time.

There were a few parts missing on the butterflies so I took acrylic paint and painted the missing pieces in.  You can’t really see it.  The right bottom wing on the black butterfly was missing a bit, the yellow butterfly was missing some on the right bottom wing.  The brown butterfly (or moth) was in tack except the body and antenna, I had cut them away on all the butterflies and had to replace them.

The dissappointment came when the Mod Podge had dried, it left the butterfly darker and some of the colors were no longer vivid.  As I began touching up flowers and adding more and adding more grass I decided to try a little watered down paint on the wings to see if it helped them.  Not much was needed.  It was like giving them a drink of water.  Since they accepted paint well, I decided to highlight them and even put some blades of grass and cone flower petals on top of them.

All in all, I’m pretty satisfied with this idea and can’t wait for friends to give me more butterflies.  They would look great on old wood.  I’m thinking they would also be easier to apply to something a bit harder than this stretched canvas.

To finish the piece, paint a coat of Mod Podge on top of the entire canvas being careful not to put too much pressure on the butterfly wings.

You should try this for yourself on a wood board for ease.  Let me know if you do.

Happy Painting

God is preparing you for flight……….

As we experience different aspects of life we grow, learn and begin to be able to say what we feel and think.

When my oldest was about 2 years old she obviously wasn’t feeling well and I kept trying to figure out what was wrong.  When I would try to communicate with her, asking her where it hurt, she would say “my tummy hurts”.  But when I finally decided it was time to go to the doctor, we discovered she had pneumonia.  She was telling me the only thing she knew to say, she wasn’t familiar with the location of lungs or phrases like, it’s hard to breathe.  But she was telling me as best as she could.

As she grew and learned she was more able to tell me exactly where she was hurting or uncomfortable.  This is just an example of common, basic learning and necessary for life.

But as we become older a more spiritual education begins to take place, an emotional journey I guess you could say.  A journey that God is in complete control of.  Whether your parents are believers in God and teaching you His Word is really of no consequence.  God is preparing you for flight, a flight of your own.  Whether or not your parents, or those who are in control of your life have it all figured out spiritually or not really doesn’t matter.  God is in control of it all.  He is preparing each of us for flight into this world as a spiritual being and our flight when we leave this world to join Him.

Rebellion, vanity and greed can get in our way of even the easiest lessons in life, as they can the spiritual lessons also.  Earthly and spiritual life lessons continue on a daily basis as long as we are alive.  The spiritual lessons will go on and on.  I’d like to get them as they come along so I can continue on to the next one.  But certain things in our lives keep us from getting it the first, second, third and sometimes even more times than we care to admit.

But through all the lessons and things we learn, we become better at articulating our spiritual feelings.  Here is where our wings come in to play.  When someone is hurting, you can say, “Can I help”?  Maybe you have gone through something similar and can lend a helping hand or just an ear.  Your wings are flapping now with the understanding of why you went through something, it was simply to help someone else and Glorify God in the process.  And you realize that God was preparing you for flight for this journey quite sometime ago.  Through the lesson, you learned how to help another.

Isn’t that what it’s all about?

If you like this art or enjoyed the story, click here to purchase a print.

The Butterfly Glorifies God

 

No matter how hard I try I just can’t get away from the “butterfly”.  I really wish I was one I think.  I am 99 % sure that every one would have to agree, butterflies are beautiful.

Most of all the process of metamorphosis is amazing.  Ever since I became a Christian I always think of metamorphosis when I think of the change that takes place in an individual when they accept Gods invitation to come into their lives.

We are born as humans learning all about the world, people, relationships, rules and regulations, acceptable and unacceptable behavior just as the caterpillar is crawling around.  We get our education and hopefully we have someone who cares enough about us to introduce us to God’s Word.  But even if we don’t, He has a plan.  People who have never even read the Bible have been known to accept Him as their Lord and Savior.  What a Wonderful Holy Spirit.

But as we begin that turn in our spiritual lives, the caterpillar is spinning that cocoon around itself and we are spinning round and round with decisions as God begins to deal with us to reach us, offering us His Love and Freedom. 

Upon opening the cocoon from certain death if the caterpillar stayed there or excepting Christ as our Savior in comparison we are freed from death and the chains that sin grips us in.  We step out into the same world as a new person, but with so much more potential to become even more beautiful, inside and out.

So upon exiting that cocoon, God gives us wings to fly.  We are free as individuals to work out our own Salvation and free to fly as high as we possibly can for Him, the One who gave His only Son to free us.

And there are so many other ways to compare the metamorphosis process to our Christian lives.  I believe God gave us the butterfly for more reasons than something beautiful to feast our eyes upon.  I believe He gave us the butterfly to help us to understand Him better.                                       

 

The butterfly glorifies God.