Art is a way of knowing God, as every other activity is!

The pattern! The Spirit hovers, then considers, then delineates, then gathers the narrative, then communicates it, or hits “share”–that’s the pattern of God’s creativity from Genesis, and again at Pentecost! He starts by hovering, then creates light (understanding, clarity), so He can see things clearly, separate them–that’s night, that’s day (or Peter’s version; this is a fulfillment of prophecy, the fact that we are prophesying in your own languages about God, and who Jesus is)–ie then He names and delineates the elements–bifurcates things (just as He asked Adam to name the animals, and later Noah to distinguish the creatures; and even later, Abraham, to put the nations in order through blessing them all!)–then places them in a meaningful narrative-in symbolically proper relationship to one another, and then shares that story with His Creation, as a symbol of who He is, and therefore How He expresses Himself! That’s one of His Ways. Or a pattern of God’s behavior! We are to love and study and come to emulate His Ways. One of His Ways, first revealed in scriptures is His Creative Nature–how and in what order He creates reveals who He is!

We in His Image, imitate His creative process–we, in our studios, hover over, consider, put light on, notice and separate out, the elements, let them dialogue, then delineate and name them, see how they relate to one another; then see the implied narrative, then share the story with others. The creative process itself reveals the Nature of God!

How creativity works, is a way of meditating on who God is! At Pentecost again, He hovers, considers (no telling how long that Spirit hovering over them, before He fills them, took from the heavenly perspective-as time works differently there!) and then enters, fills and empowers the people there to get up and bear witness. To break down scriptures, delineate things, and tell the tale–the true story of Jesus. God is creative, but His Ways are the same forever. So we can study creativity itself as a way of knowing what He is like!

When we create, we hover and consider, we capture elements, and see what they are, and how they relate, and we start to allow them to dialogue into a relationship–and be able to recognize, then translate that story to others in a meaningful way!

When we are in the creative process, we are imitating and participating in a part of who He is. Creativity again is a way of getting to know His Ways. We study the patterns of creativity, starting with God’s, and then in a broken way, looking at our own, as a way of understanding how He truly is. That is the purpose of art–to imitate and get to know and love God. Making art is a way of getting to know God, in short–a medium, as every other activity in life is–through which to commune!

Much like when you are just making still art. At first, we hover, then we see the elements, then we delineate and name and then edit into clear expression–as in Genesis. Still, at first, we are unsure, why this topic or theme or idea or image or fraction of image is capturing us–then we keep hovering, keep going, and start to sense the inner motifs-that there is something gluing them metaphysically to one another internally. And it’s not always just about us either–sometimes its the meaning of other, or spirit led seeing, so we are getting this collage form of prophecy daily! Perhaps that’s the value or meaning of collage–maybe it is a metaphor for daily life. Each type of beauty has a different weight, but they are all in conversation through our spirit and His. When you put the images all in one place, you start to see the tone of conversation they were having all along! And they start to tell us something by how they constellate around one another–what sort of beauty constellation are we perceiving daily? What are the themes, what connects what our eye is drawn to daily. This can be a way, that God reveals the meaning of our days to us, as we move in art dialogue with all we see. In this sense, we discover our days, not invent them. We encounter God in our creative dialoguing with our days!