My art reveals my truest essence—a soul made visible in all its intimacy and intricacy. It was difficult to concentrate and to articulate my deepest feelings for God. My endearments were spoken scattershot—blurted erratically, thrown haphazardly to the wind. I began to realize that sentiments so treasured, so tender, must be carefully weighed and thoughtfully considered, mined like gems from the heart’s depths.
“I cannot help but love God because He loves me; I cannot help but scribble love ‘letters’ to God because He has written to me.” – ADAM AMOS
I often tried unsuccessfully to verbalize my love for my Heavenly Father; Self-conscious and stilted, I sometimes found it impossible to speak my love in prayer. My stoic soul melted, giving way to a litany of love, my voice subdued and restrained by human limits using my vocabulary will never do, if there are words for God then I don’t have them, so I use art.
One day I took the time to paint a love picture addressed to God; It was startling, striking a chord deep within my soul, colors flooded my bare naked canvas, enthusiastically charged and awakening my inner childlike flow state, stirring my soul and pointing me to my highest joy. My emotions poured forth, spilling over from my heart’s reservoir of love. Somehow the very act of painting—this praying on canvas—had released a geyser of feelings formerly unexpressed. Yet this experience really should have come as no surprise; After all, God, our supreme Lover, our great Romancer, knew that a wonderful way to woo “His” beloved and express my emotions was through my love for art. I knew that “colors mingle souls,” and God gave us His heart-print the Bible in ink so that we would have the joy of reading, pondering, and tracing its testimony over and over again. Because the spoken word is ephemeral, God bestowed us with a lasting testament of His passion. God took great pleasure in giving us His written love letter, in this I was delighted and wanted nothing more than to share this sensation. Seeing as I could justly assume God too would take great delight in receiving a scribbled response, painted from my heart. Because God is an artist, it is only natural that we, created in His image, are artist also and so the adventure of “Self” discovery jolted into action.
The most beautiful way I have found in which to wrap the gift of my heart is within art and sharing the good news of God. It is the gift of my whole heart which I believe God most desires—a heart without pretense or posturing; a heart in all its honesty, beauty, passion, and brokenness; a heart pulsing with love, joy, sadness, delight, doubt, pain, anguish, even anger. True love expresses all emotions, and true love—God’s true love for me—accepts them, this is my testimony this is my gift to our loving Creator.
“Art is our heart on our sleeve, our battle standard, our essence, our indelible signature, our emotional fingerprint, our private well of memory…our true Secret Self.” – ADAM AMOS
It is our hidden “Self” we most long to reveal, God is real, and creating art draws me closer to Him. I create because I desire to offer Him more than a hurried “I love You” on the run. I create because I long to embroider my passion with a flourish of my brush, an embellishment of my heart. I create because my spoken sentiments are evanescent, and I desire a permanent way to preserve my thoughts. I create because God values my prayers so much that He says He sprinkles them with incense and saves them in the “golden bowls of heaven.”
Through my ups, my downs, my victories, my defeats, my adoration, my apathy, my faith, my doubts, my questions—and God’s responses—are recorded on my canvas. These entries are love letters from my heart to God’s—messages from His heart to mine— “letters” sent special delivery to and from Heaven that have changed my life on earth. I sign my “letters” in paint that will one-day fade. But God signs His in indelible ink—the blood of His Son shed for me, blood that covers my imperfection and allows me to pray openly to Him.
