Excerpts from an interview i did this week on where art and Life intersect! Just raw clips here, but will publish the whole interview once out! In the meantime enjoy the snapshot version!

Art is meant to lead to Love….(just some good versus bad, art/religion thoughts your way today; there’s still a difference! One leads to living well!)

Playing around the “the rule of thirds today” in my art today-these shots. Turns out there are some laws of perception, which were already discovered!

Even city skylines have to notice the rule of thirds, as should good religion. “God sees us well!” as one monk put it. I learn so much through art-ing!
Over the years, people have figured out what interest the natural eye. It is also so, with the heart, i propose!

In short,the rule of thirds goes, when you frame something (painting or photography, and i would extend it to writing as well etc), or make a composition, break it into thirds, and put the subject towards the right or left third, not at the center. Look it up, it’s true. It’s more pleasing to be oblique! Which is good, like Emily Dickinson said, we are all slant!

Some art is just truer to Life than others. Mozart, Beethoven, regardless of all their personal beliefs, made art which was truer to Life than others. Art sometimes knows things which even the artist themselves didn’t. When we see or, in their case, listen well, we tap into a much longer song than us. Some ways of seeing are better than others. But, back to the rule of thirds…

Even our noses, are not centered. The gospel is also slanted in its own way. God becomes human—that’s just weird. The Creator enters His creation as a part of it. To exaggerate it, what if Jesus would’ve come as a squirrel. That’s about how weird the gospel is! The Father’s love would’ve still entered through a squirrel (as it does!), but He chose a baby human form. Tell me that’s not good odd art! Still, blows me away, anyway.

Rule of thirds—don’t put your subject in the middle; put it towards the right or left, and the second most important element on the opposite line. What bad christian art does is put the subject at the center, so it lacks the subtlety of the eye, and becomes sentimental or over stated. Sappy, in short, not true to how things are. In truth, we suck and are loved; we suffer and have joy simultaneously! We are in heaven and on earth etc. We are that sort of contradiction. And we are good art! Evidently, if we are to believe St Paul, we are masterpiece art! We are His greatest poems! (Ephesians 2:10)

Bad art is bad religion, or at least bad expression of it. Bad religious art, hurts the soul-as they say. Let’s see well to be well friends! Art’s not just for breakfast anymore! We need to see well, to know, and love well…seeing is the beginning of interpretation. “What do you see?” God asked the prophet Jeremiah. He saw well, so God continued the conversation.

Or later, Jesus said to Nathanael, I saw you under the tree. As a fellow seer, Nathanael was moved by this (a seer, being seen; i relate to those moments when our angels are watching us, as we watch!), and followed the Great Perceiver. Jesus saw into their hearts, it says in several other places. Evidently it matters how and from where we see.

“Seeing people and things, into wholeness is one role of art!”

Spiritual perception is rarely spoken of, but may be the starting point. If i see myself as loved, for instance, my life changes. If i see you as loved, our relationship shifts foundations!

if as Tillich said, a true symbol participates in the Reality to which it points, then it matters how we participate. Let’s be good art.
And art is a spiritual practice, at the end of the Day!

Beholding is a form of knowing. Beholding well, a form of Loving!
I’m still practicing see well. It’s a life long discipline.

But, just the rule of thirds alone, would help bad art become better or truer to what IS. We see, therefore we Love. Art is meant to increase empathetic and true vision of how things are. At least, that’s my art practice.

Let’s go and see well, regardless. For God enjoys perceiving through us! He is the Photographer, i am the camera! And He has a great sense of composition! He made up the rule of thirds! Just look at the Trinity, if you don’t believe me!

One of my thesis is that art is not just decoration, but a teacher of how to see things more as they really are. Art, for me, is spiritual formation. It really isn’t a consumer product or decoration for some gospel. It is more like a tabernacle of meeting and being transformed. As I see you, i will treat you. The essence of ethics is good sight of one another.

If i see you as a child of God with great dignity, as a great poem that God made up, i will treat you accordingly. So it matters how we see our neighbor! As we see, so we Love. I treat you, as i behold you. It is the same with Nature. So it matters that i see you well, that is through the lens of Love.

More soon of this pet heart topic of mine!

See well friends! I pray to see you soon, more as you will be forever, as George Macdonald put it. I need to see your forever self, to treat you with dignity today!

Prophetic vision should be more common! Just learning to see things, closer to how they actually are, is a healing action, and it becomes, a way of life!

Just some raw thoughts on where art and life intersect.