Well if you want to be post modern about it 
How about putting modern objects together with natural ones. Apples and Ipads and liquorice allsorts and headphones and …
Hmmm… That’s an idea! But no more apples!
The bark of certain trees, close-up, has a lot of texture and looks like the surface of a planet under an alien sun.
True, Dave! It is so cold outside at the moment, that I might have to sacrifice a tree branch to bring indoors.
How about the ingredients for a favorite dish? Lit candles are fun, or a fire in the stove. I carry a sketch book everywhere. Tonight I went to a writers’ group meeting with my stepdaughter and drew the lady sitting across the room from us. In case she noticed me drawing and asked to see it, I did take off five pounds or so. 
But of course, something like a still life set-up would be better for colored pencils which are so meticulous and take quite a lot of time.
I wander around the house and pick stuff up randomly – usually from out of the fridge, though. I did one of raspberries, blackberries and blueberries – they’re so beautiful, and the perfect subject for cp drawing. Grapes are good too, or a single perfect (or not so perfect) bloom. I did one with a big purple onion along with green beans and roma tomatoes (because that’s what I’d bought that day at the grocery store), and another of a bowl of lemons (pastel on velvet matte board). But if you want to get away from fruit and veggies, anything will do. A pair of charactery old shoes/boots, a disheveled bed, a stack of boring art history books . . . Colored pencils are, imo, great for botanical drawings since they’re so good for tiny detail. Ooh! Popcorn would be fun to do! I particularly like doing glass and liquids and silver – anything shiny and reflective. People think they’re so difficult but they’re actually not (just draw what you see; not what you ‘know’ to be there), and I’m always so impressed with myself when I pull it off. Plus, other people are really impressed too, 'cause they have no idea how easy it is to do.
Have fun, and don’t neglect to post some of your pictures. 
We think alike, Cindy – I’ve already drawn ingredients to favorite meals – twice.
I would like to draw a candle, or perhaps paint would work well so I can better show the subtle shifts in color. (But I haven’t used paint since 7th grade, so maybe that wouldn’t be such a good idea! 
Colored pencils are my safety zone!)
After all this talk about art, I googled you last night to find your lovely blog again. I found the pastel piece of the lemons you mentioned, and I really like that you emphasized the softness of the medium while nonetheless retaining the texture of the lemons. And I just love your hand-thrown pottery–makes me very excited for ceramics class whenever I get the chance to sign up. I recently shadowed in a hand-thrown pottery class, and it looks like so much fun!
I like the idea of old shoes/boots. And beware the wrath of the Prof for that art history comment!
I think I’m going to start off with some flowers, because I hate to go too far from my comfort zone for the first drawing. I started some bright yellow flowers last night from an artificial arrangement my mom had stored in the basement.
Danke, everyone!
Flowers are fun to do! 
I can’t resist showing off my first cp flower, which I did from a photograph, but still . . . I love burnished cp. It’s a lot of work, but the results are just amazing to me. And to think I once believed cp to be wimpy wishy-washy color. It just goes to show you get what you pay for. 
or at least you do with colored pencils.
Gorgeous. Makes one feel like one could reach in and feel the texture of the petals.
I know I’m late in this thread but…
Phil Keaggy happens to be my favorite Christian artist. Whether he rocks out, plays folk, or gentle instrumentals, he is just an amazing guitarist (even without the rumor that Jimi Hendrix once said he was the greatest guitarist he’s ever heard).
I believe God has given man the talent to creat and be creative, whatever art or invention he makes. However, like anything else, that talent can be misused and abused. Certainly there is stuff I’ve heard that I just cannot see God ever be pleased with, even in Christian circle, but then I’m not God. And maybe my musical tastes are just different.
But I don’t limit myself to just Christian music. I like all kinds of styles, as long as it isn’t blatently blasting God or done in poor taste, even secular music.
And sometimes it does seem like something spiritual comes out of someone who may not come off that way. For instance, I got turned on to Sigur Ros one day when I inadvertently heard a song called “Sæglópur” on the TV (it was from an ad for a video game). It was one of the most uplifting songs I’ve ever heard, IMO. Subtle at the beginning, but crescending to heights in the middle before slipping off into a symphonic etheral sendoff at the end. And I didn’t even undestand the words because it was all sung in Icelandic, where the band originated. As I listened to more of their music, notably songs like “Untitled #4”, “Hoppipolla”, and “Góðan daginn”, I was impressed by the level of spirituality that seems to come through their music. But what I didn’t know at the time was that their lead singer and guitarist, Jónsi Birgisson, is openly gay and an atheist. So I don’t know, but I just know I like their music.
Ultimately, imo, that which is beautiful points toward our Father, and that which is ugly points toward degradation – whoever creates it, whatever their spirituality or lack thereof. Father has placed His image in all of us, and sometimes it just shows – right through all the grime and yuck and heartbreak. In anything beautiful, He shows Himself to us, because beauty is HIS characteristic. Misused and distorted as it often is, beauty is a divine attribute, even if it is nailed to a tree and bleeding.
Beautiful flower, Cindy! I love the strong highlights (and warm colored pencil colors are so much fun to use!) Yes, you really get what you pay for! Do you use Prismacolor – my favorite!
Very true and very wise!
Hi all,
I’ve been following along with interest and learning much from your discussion, so thanks!
This made me wonder about “ugly” art, or at least art portraying “ugly” things such as Picasso’s Guernica. Is God in there? Is the truth in art, even if ugly, a manifestation of God and thus beautiful? I’m just thinking out loud here not disagreeing with Cindy…
Steve
Hmmmm…wondering about that whole ‘manifestation of God’ question. I started a thread up in Theology on Does God Suffer - I think it is worth reading to the very end - I got the link from Robin Parry’s blog.
It is IMO a critical theological point, and the essay could keep us from going down a troublesome path. Maybe. Please take a read - the whole thing, it’s not that long - if you get a chance. It will give us a platform to agree/disagree with, at least.
Good questions.
I’ve read the article at First Things – I think the polarity of transcendence and immanence in God is a profound mystery. I think transcendence and impassibility is over stressed in Calvinism which has influenced some here. Christ certainly suffered and suffers – this has been a sign for many great Christians and is quite understandable in terms of post-Holocaust theology. But it has its dangers fo going to far in one direction – like all theological emphases do.
Ugly art is difficult. Christ in the Carpenter’s Shop was considered outrageously and shockingly ugly in its time – but not so today. The shock of the new is always inherent in any art with a progressive tradition – that is the Western Tradition - not so in the hieratic art of Ancient Egypt or in the Orthodox Icons perhaps but even in these there is innovation over time – but strictly limited.
Picasso’s Guernica portrays horror – but it does so truthfully. It is not representational but it has a sort of apocalyptic depth in unveiling the barbarity of modern war. If fit opens the eyes to the horror of war – ‘The Pity of War; the Pity War distilled’ - it may not be beautiful but it certainly serves Truth.
It’s a bit like Wilfred Owens’ War Poems – these disclose the pity of war. There were other poems written at the time which disguised it in classical allegory. I can’t remember the name of the poet but there was a particularly psychotic English gentleman who simply loved killing Germans just for the sport of it. HE wrote poems in which War happens clouded in mythic tropes rather than in terms of its real pity. His poems were acceptable at the time whilst Owens’ were shocking – ‘All blood guts and sucking sugar candy’ as W.B. Yeats saw fit to describe them.
The cult of the ugly and the depraved for its own sake is a different matter – and on this I’d agree with Cinders and Kate.
Is it possible that the mere human recognition of evil and rebellion against misery holds a spark of divinity? I mean, man would revel in evil were it not for God’s goodness dwelling – however hidden – in his heart, right?
That is perhaps why WWI trench poetry was, in a sense, “shocking” but “beautiful,” while ugly art created simply in the name of ugliness remains depraved. For example, in “Dulce et Decorum Est,” Owens describes his gassed comrade’s writhing face as “a devil’s, sick of sin.” Owen’s poem is not a celebration of ugliness – it’s a cry against it.
I see a lot of artists today who (in my opinion) simply create horrific things for public shock value. They are not exhibiting ugliness in order to eradicate evil, as Owens did, so their work has no “divine spark.”
My two cents – but I’m biased, because I like pretty things.
Kate
Yes Kate I think there is a real spark of truth in Art that depicts evil as a protest against it. Of course there is. But I also agree that art which simply glorifies ugliness, cruelty etc. is simply not very useful and is often pretty shoddily executed. Btu evil and cruelty are proper subjects for Art nevertheless as are Goodness, Beauty and Truth. The former needs the context of the latter - that’s all. If it doesn’t have this context as long as it isn’t actually depraved and depraving - like child pornography - then in a free society where we let the wheat and the tares grow up together we can simply pass it by. And sometimes I think we need to review initial apprehensions - sometimes we are only being repelled by the shock of the new (as Dickens’s was with Millais). I think sometimes people overreact to stuff like say conceptual art which is never meant to have moral seriousness anyway - it’s light entertainment pure and simple
I was just thinking Dave – we have to think of God’s impassibility sometimes in human terms – while relapsing we are only thinking of it in human terms. One of the cardinal virtues to be cultivated in the orthodox tradition so that we may grow into the likeness of God is ‘dispassion’. This is not the opposite of compassion. Rather it denotes the ability to stand apart from our own suffering and not over indulge when encountering the sufferings of ever (for how can we be of help then?).
The trouble with some modern art and music – soaked in notions of personal authenticity and the cult of the wounded child – is that it lacks dispassion. This was certainly true of lots of stream of consciousness poetry in the 1960s for example and of songs by Morrisey too.
Without dispassion we cannot feel empathy – which i take to be the ability to enter another’s suffering imaginatively without over identifying with these as one’s own sufferings. ‘Sympathy is the degraded child of empathy – ‘I know just how you feel’ (and we never do even if there are correspondences in our experience).
I think great art has the quality of dispassion. It is in never just a wounded gushing – it is well made and has taken real processes of the heart in detachment to create. And yes – I think religious art that just obsesses on the wound tends to become degenerate, sado- masochistic, histrionic and sentimental (like a lot of baroque Catholic art and Jesus Christ Superstar for example and Mel Gibson movies).
I think Mother Julian was a true artists and T.S. Eliot wrote the following words in a poem that cites her –
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.
Love
Dick
Lots of food for thought there, Dick and Kate, thanks.
I think you have it, Kate. A thing can be horrible and still beautiful, like Jesus on that cross. Not in itself a beautiful sight, yet beautiful for the love it portrays. Dulce et Decorum Est is a disturbing, heart breaking poem, yet I would still call it beautiful. I’m not sure why . . . I think because of the intent – again – maybe it’s really down to that in the end. We may have all sorts of differing opinions as to what we consider pleasing. I think that if the intent, maybe, is to bring about beauty (ending the glorification of war, for example), then that also conveys a certain beauty, especially as the poem is well written. On the other hand, if the intent is simply to create beauty, that has its own merit too, I think.
On the other hand, if the intent is to exploit sex, the most beautiful young woman cannot make the picture lovely; it is ugly though she is beautiful. I think too (and this is just me musing – anyone at all, please feel free to call me on it if you think I’m wrong – I may well BE wrong) that art created for the sake of expressing one’s own anguish and pain and sorrow, while it is (I hope) therapeutic for the artist, might not be what I would call beautiful. I don’t usually share those things unless I think they might be helpful to someone else. People have enough to be depressed about without me adding to the load!
So o o o what do ya’ll think?
Dick – just saw your post. VERY helpful, what you’re saying about being dispassionate. Thanks!
I think you’re both spot on, Uncle Prof and Cinders. Interesting about dispassion – I’ve never heard of it as a virtue, but it makes sense. Sympathy is fruitless, but it’s hard to avoid. Whenever I go out to lunch or coffee with friends, for example, we usually fall into gushing about whatever “drama” is going on in our lives. (I don’t have much “real” drama, so I don’t do much gushing! ) However, I do find myself all-to-often saying, “Oh, I know just how you feel!.. How terrible!.. You don’t say!” Rarely do I actually accomplish anything for the poor soul on the other side of the table!
When I was young, the old paintings of Judgement Day and hellfire had a particularly strong effect on me. (And I remember crying when my first grade teacher told us the class was going to watch a cartoon version of Christ’s Passion. I only returned from the hallway when she promised me an ice cream sandwich. ) So needless to say, I still dislike this kind of art, although I think Cindy’s right – the Crucifixion is most certainly beautiful in the love it portrays.
This thought reminds me of an artist I had to write about for a class report a few weeks ago. Bobby Baker, a contemporary artist based in London, suffers from borderline personality disorder. She completed a watercolor painting for each day she spent at her mental-health day-center, spanning eleven years of treatment. I found her interesting, because very few artists create *during *their periods of mental instability. For example, O’Keefe, despite her pretty flower paintings, suffered from clinical depression. Michelangelo reportedly had OCD. Van Gogh likely had manic depression, and possibly schizophrenia. However, from my limited knowledge, these artists did not create in the midst of mental anguish. They waited for a reprieve.
When I look at Bobby Baker’s work, I do not find it attractive. Although not detailed, her pieces are quite gruesome and disturbed. So I wonder, Cindy and others: Are Bobby’s gruesome drawings “art?” On one end, I think one could argue that her paintings are “art,” because they give the viewers a glimpse into the complicated human psyche. However, like Cindy, I wonder if such works would be better labelled as “therapeutic.” Where do we draw the line?
I can’t quite see the beauty in the crucifixion paintings, though I can appreciate the artistry of some of the work. Let me put it this way - Would you find the same beauty in a gruesome painting of a murderous rogue being crucified? I could not tell the difference, probably.
Of course I do understand the love behind the act of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, but the act visually was not beautiful, as I see it.
I may be wrong…I don’t doubt that those with better sensibilities than mine can see things that I can’t. I apologize if I’m misunderstanding you.
This painting surprised me. Coming out of the ‘dark ages’ and all. I did not expect those wings!!