This video shows highlights from my sacred art images. Sacred images have always made a powerful impression on me. When they are powerful, they can pull me into a meditative state and seem to be windows to a deeper and more satisfying reality. At no time was this effect more intense than when I drew sacred images on the streets of Rome. A picture could often pull a group of pedestrians into a circle and create a small island of peace and focus in an otherwise noisy and confusing environment. At the time, I wrote:
“I experienced for the first time a phenomenon that would come to repeat itself over and over again: The power of the image transformed not only the space but also everything and everyone around it. As the image grew, so did the audience, and the synergy created between the two was a tangible, positive force.”
Like natural beauty, images can have the power to evoke a meditative state where we can communicate with the eternal. The ability to use beauty to communicate spiritual truth is the most important of all the lost, neglected, or ignored ideas from Western European art. I try to use this concept in my work and make it pertinent to my own time and thus appealing to a contemporary audience.
Rome was the ultimate environment for studying sacred art. Many centuries of religious paintings and icons were often on display in the same church. I also met many historians and restorers on the street while doing my pavement art. They often invited me to climb the scaffolding in churches under restoration to see the fresco paintings up close. I even touched the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Despite the variety of painting styles on display, there was an underlying continuity in the imagery. I created some of the sacred art images in my video in an environment that recalls the Roman catacombs.
Art is the way I am best able to understand the physical world, discover order in the universe, and communicate those discoveries to others. I think that the desire to communicate has always been foremost in my artistic agenda. Although I have created images my whole life, I made my formal decision to be a professional artist in high school. The inherent power of imagery has guided my spiritual path. I have worked nearly every day, including weekends, on artwork of some sort. Part of what makes this possible is that the process of creating feels meditative and spiritual.
People who assert that science and religion are opposites have a poor understanding of both. To me, they are just two different ways of organizing creative principles. They are not polarities, though they may vie for our attention. Science focuses on how creative principles form physical patterns, and religion focuses on how these same principles form ideal patterns. Each discipline organizes a huge amount of information according to an internally logical set of rules. The process yields insight into an aspect of how the universe works.
In my opinion, human beings are still very far from being able to grasp the mysteries of the universe as a whole. Religion and science are two helpful tools if we apply them with understanding, refinement, and empathy.
To read further, continue to my sacred art page.
