“Let There Be Space” June 2017 – February 2020: The Early Years
I am a bit of an artist. I started years ago with a professional painter standing over my shoulder telling me where to put the paint on my first few paintings. Here’s the result of that painting.
It’s a painting of my mother taken from a picture made of her in Athens in 1947. I call it “Pagona in Black”). She was mourning the premature death of her brother in America, hence the black. And the look in her eyes said it all.
I take no credit for this painting. A wonderful artist named Pat Harris virtually made me her painting puppet. She let me do a whole lot of it. I was the puppet. She was the puppet master. I placed most of the paint on the canvas.
Except for one part. She wouldn’t let me put the white dot in the eyes. It’s that white dot in the eyes that people often don’t notice. When you put the white dot in the eyes the paintings come alive. And if you’re painting someone you love, you won’t let it go until you get it right.
I never forgot that.
So over the years, I’ve put many a white dot in many an eye. I put that white dot in the eyes of a painting of my granddaughter, just to give the momentum to finish the painting.
I’ve put white dots in the eyes of characters in fantasy stories, including children and dual-natured cats,
and rescuing charioteers pulled by Michaelangelo horses.
I learned the lesson of making a project come alive by placing the white dots in its eyes. But there is even a bigger lesson I’ve learned.
The Value of Exercising the Courage of Putting the Paint on an Empty Space---and Going With the Flow As the Paint Does Its Own Thing.
The biggest lesson is about simply choosing the right empty space. And having the courage to simply begin to put some paint on it, and watch very closely what happens without locking it into some preconceived vision.
You start with a blank canvas.
You may outline a few things you want to fill with paint and lights and shadows, and dimensionality.
You finally get some paint down on the canvas, working loosely within the parameters of your outline.
And then you discover.
The paint and canvas, and the moment have a life all their own. You start out with the vision going in one direction, but the way the paint goes down, the way it flows, and the way it dries has something very significant to contribute to the final finished product. It causes you to see things that weren’t in your mind before. This is how “clouds” of creatures came to surround my take J. M. Barrie’s original Tinkerbell, of course with my granddaughter’s face and her cat Hector, in the midst.
Blobby white clouds took on life. I saw eyes and mouths and quizzical expressions.
Before you knew it, Lizzie was accompanied by a friendly hippo to her upper right. A protective elephant on her upper left. And a dangerous shark to her lower left.
And a quizzical lamb looking for ways to protect her from dangers to her lower right.
A Lesson About Art, God’s Creative Process, and Founding a Tipp Centr.
When God created the heavens and earth, I believe He started out with a blank slate. He Big Banged a universe into existence.
But as He guided the formation of matter and eventually life, even He allowed the creative canvas to have a life of its own. A creation pattern emerges.
Determine the space. Fill it with light. And follow the life.
That’s what we had to do when the idea of the Tipp Center “Big Bang-ed” in our heads.
1. Determine the Space
We had to first identify which empty and underutilized space was just waiting to be given God’s life.
2. Fill it with light.
That is, establish the visionary foundation for the project.
And we had to be specific. We had to determine which visionary “white dots” in the eyes of our spiritual hearts were critical and keep us committed to the project.
3. Fill it with life.
We had to throw some mud on the wall---in our case, outreach events---and see what stuck.
Next time I’ll give specifics for all three of these steps.
Maybe there’s a way to grow more “T.I.P.P. Centers”---Trinitarian Incarnational Practice and Proclamation Centers---in southwest Ohio, and beyond.
In the meantime, here’s a link where with more of my paintings for you to enjoy. Feel free to give this emerging Smiling Eye-Con a pat on his pointed head.