Email to a Young Artist

Dear Friend

It was wonderful to get your email. Of course, I remember you, but it must be two years since I saw you last! From the sound of things, a good deal has unfolded since then. So good to be in touch—thanks for reaching out. Yes, we’re all well thanks.

I’m stoked to hear that you’re making art. Having seen something of your teen years, I think I suspected that this would be part of your journey, so I’m not surprised (I’m also delighted). I’m also not surprised that you have questions. My life as an artist (a bit like you with your painting, I began writing poetry in my late teens) has been marked by an ongoing conversation with myself and others about art: what it is, what I think I’m doing, and what we should be aiming for (authenticity? the recognition of others? social transformation? just making something beautiful?). In short, I get it! I also understand your frustration at the conversation with your pastor—in fact, I found myself getting a bit indignant reading that bit. So let me encourage you: as a Christian, you have inherited a most incredible, culturally and historically expansive tradition of art practice and theory. There’s so much more to this than ensuring that your painting has a “Christian message.” So much more! I suggest you make a pot of tea because I’m going to try to share some of that “more” here.

Right at the outset, let me say: no, I don’t find it weird that you think about painting all the time, or that you’re in love with light and shadow, or that you have started carrying a sketchbook with you (all through my 20s, I got around with a 3B1 notebook in my back pocket to capture lines of poetry as they slipped by). As long as there have been human beings, we have made art: we have held up a mirror to the world in compelling, memorable, and life-giving ways. It’s not just a nice thing we do on the side after sorting the economic or political realities—human beings make art in lean times as well as rich (and the art is possibly better for it). And when we make useful things, we often make them beautiful as well. In short, art-making is a pretty basic human urge, and you’re not weird for doing it.

I also want to affirm a bunch of other things you’ve raised. Yes, art has to do with beauty, not just with getting a message across. This is worth pondering, and not just because of your experience at church; my hunch is that “beauty” probably won’t get much airtime in your first year at art school. Likewise, the question of art as self-expression—yes, you’re totally right, it is not straightforward, and yes, there’s a good wrestle here. But it’s a question that needs a much bigger frame, so let me give that a go in this email, and you can perhaps come back to me with further questions? Hmm … what else? Oh, yes—art and prayer, that’s totally a conversation we can have; I’d like to suggest Scripture also needs to be in the mix. To these questions, I hope you won’t mind if I add a few more? Like, how is the artist responsible, and to whom? How important is it to develop skill and craft or is it enough to express myself freely? Do I aim for originality or lean into tradition? What is success? And how can I justify making art when people are suffering here in Aotearoa and overseas/when we are facing a climate crisis/when people have not heard of Jesus and God’s gift of forgiveness? Oh, and then there’s always, what does God think about my art-making? Phew, I’m not trying to overwhelm you here! But when we understand the arts within the large and profound setting of God’s purposes, then much of what I’ve just named becomes a good deal clearer. And it’s a really beautiful, really compelling picture. One last comment before I try to paint some of this picture: there’s much I’ve yet to learn, both in my own poetry and in my understanding about the arts, so sift and test what I’m saying here and then let’s keep the conversation going!

I think the first thing we’ve got to talk about is delight because delight is basic to the urge to make art, to make a beautiful meaning. This has its roots in a particular kind of pleasure in the world—not a pleasure that wants to eat up everything it sees, tastes, or touches but a pleasure that settles down, full to the brim with beholding the good world. To delight in something, let’s say, is to repose in an aching satisfaction, to be arrested by beauty. We’re caught off guard by the compelling irresolution of a suspended chord; we keep thinking about that shade of teal (or was it blue?); we notice the way the light falls across the resting hand of the man across the bus aisle; we have a sudden urge to touch the rough-cast sides of that hand-thrown pot; stopping before the grace-filled posture of that mature pine, we adjust our shoulders to stand ever so slightly more upright. Despite everything, the world is excessively beautiful, drawing delight out of us like nectar from a flower. And very often, our response is to join in—to sing, to make, to touch, to dance, to pun, to rhyme, to music, and paint and draw and arrange and curate and enact. “I just have to make something,” says the artist upon waking. That urge is not merely personal, it’s a big fat “Yes!” to the beauty of the world. We’re delighted, and so we join in.

Seems to me so much art is serious about the wrong thing: it takes itself far too seriously (often because the artist, being ambitious or pretentious, takes him– or herself too seriously) and so it becomes somehow self-absorbed, losing the playfulness that gave rise to it. Or, convinced that the world is a lost cause, it becomes cynical, an exercise in stripping back a veneer of beauty to reveal the stark meaninglessness of things. Yet, despite what some artists believe about their work or the world, the basic motive of delight persists. And here is the key thing—delight is joyfully serious about the world. It is a kind of agreement that there’s something here to celebrate, something real we can join in on (have you seen my essay on celebration? I’ll send you a copy). The delight in art-making is a way of agreeing with the delightful world. In short, the delight in making is an important clue.

As you know, I love words. Clue, or clew, originally meant a ball of thread, such as you might use to escape a labyrinth. As a clue, delight is worth following up on. We regularly intuit that the world is stuffed with meaning. “There is more to life,” we say in the dark of the maze. Sometimes, despite ourselves, we overflow with this moreness; when things go well, many people are thankful—they want to say “Thank you!” In the same way, our delight in the world can awaken in us a desire to speak that delight out, to address its source in gratitude and awe. “Where did all this beauty come from?”, we wonder. And as this clew of delight unravels through the labyrinth of contemporary cynicism, we find it can lead us out into the wide open space of praise, which is the delight of the world, addressed to its maker.

More and more, when I have a question about what’s really real, I turn to Scripture. Science can describe the parts, function, and relation of things—what things are made of—but good scientific method refrains from presuming to give an account of what something is. By is, I mean not just physically, but morally and spiritually—that is, in relation to God. For that, we have to lean not on our own understanding but the gift of Holy Scripture. I know, I know—heaps more questions here … but, for now, work with me. When it comes to the delight of the world, we need the words of Psalm 19—it’s like being called out of the maze into light:

The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.

Listen, says the Psalm, hear the enduring song of the cosmos. It spans the reaches of all time and space, an ineluctable (look it up) upwelling of revelatory understanding, of articulate meaningfulness beyond words. And what does the cosmos “say”? Whom does it address? Well, not itself! This delight-full world is not a gift from itself to itself. The cosmos speaks of the glory—the searing radiance—of the One “who dwells in unapproachable light” (1 Timothy 6:15–16). The world, in other words, is a creation, a creation that, despite the travail of sin and evil, is radiant with delight. Creation says, “God, you are! Praise you!”

OK. Let me settle down and try to explain more clearly the connection I’m making between delight, praise, and art (as well as some connections I’m not making). First, the delight we experience in the world and in our art-making points to the larger reality of creation’s praise and our part in it. It is a profound orientation: we don’t stand above creation or apart from it; actually, we’re the part that is made—with our lives and our culture and our making and our words and our work—to voice creation’s praise in a free response of love. This is a profound reorientation for art too. Notice: Psalm 19 is itself art—a poem. Here, art not only represents creation’s wordless praise, but it also joins in. Now, I know: all this talk of praise can sound like a recipe for bad art. But hear how expansive this call to “praise” is. Scripture tells us that even as it praises God, creation also voices its pain at the effects of sin and evil (see Romans 8). The Bible’s many songs of lament show we’re to lift all of creation to God—our lives, the lives of our communities, the life of the world, the travail of the nonhuman world. So, the call to give voice to creation’s song does not mean sanitised or sentimental art. The art of Scripture itself suggests exactly the opposite—we’re to lift up all of it to God. You can forget “art for art’s sake”—this is a far more challenging, far more noble, far more interesting task!

Second, if the artist accepts that yes, she’s a creature (she owes her life to a loving God, that her life has been shaped in particular ways, and that she’s woven into creation’s web of physical, moral, and spiritual relations), then it seems to me that she can save herself a whole lot of bother. She can unburden her art-making from a whole lot of expectations for which it’s simply not cut out. Art is not a means of becoming great but is one good vocation among the many that are given for the praise of God and the good of the world. As such, art learns to be reasonably unconcerned about itself. It is humble. It delights in the world, is concerned for the world, and is mindful of God. The goal is not self-expression; it may be the most fitting way to do this or that work, but it’s never an end in itself. This art-making isn’t worried about death, time, or “progress”: it’s not trying to attain immortality; it understands the value of the past and of tradition, and embraces these. Insofar as it is framed by the priestly calling to give voice to creation’s praise and lamentation, art-making is not anxious or insecure. Its value derives finally not from applause, or from art grants, or from sales, but from participation in the song of creation. How can we justify making such art in a time of climate crisis, in a time of unbelief, in a time of violence? Psalm 19 leads me to say: if it’s true that the world is creation and that art-making is a fitting way for the human creature to participate in creation’s praise and lament, well, it would be obscene not to.

Let me try to anchor this in our experience of art-making. I prefer, by the way, to talk about humans “making” and to reserve “creating” for God. There’s nothing essential in these terms, but I’m trying to distinguish between God, who, in his love, creates the world out of nothing without any constraint or compulsion, and the human, who makes in creation, constrained by the limits and possibilities of creation. We are not, thank goodness, called to be mini gods, creating our own worlds for our own purposes. We’re created as makers, as creatures who have a distinct calling to cultivate the earth, to offer up to God the stuff of his world as the work of our hands. To help us think about making, take bread. From the seeds of certain grasses and the oil pressed from certain fruits, salt from the earth or sea, maybe with yeast spores, and with water, we make: we grind and we ferment and mix and knead; we prove and knead; we shape and bake. The result is a loaf of bread that is life to us, nourishing the maker and the eater alike. Instinctively, we give thanks for this bread: it is the work of human hands with the stuff of the earth but it is nonetheless God’s gift. In many respects, art is the same: we take up the stuff of the creation (pigments and inks, clay, molten sand, smelted metal and stone, tones and rhythmic beats, silence and time, bodies and words) and make things (objects and dances and music and artful language) that, at best, are nourishing for the giver and receiver alike. Yep, in other important ways, a work of art is not the same as a loaf of bread: while often nourishing, art typically exceeds pure usefulness; there’s a moreness of meaning at work. This is a HUGE conversation—more than I have scope or skill for here—so here let me simply follow one theologian in saying that art is profoundly metaphorical: it typically is speaking of one thing (the import of an artwork) in terms of another (paint on a canvas, words on a page, etc.).

When we allow ourselves to embrace art as making, some wonderful insights become available. Many years ago, I took a university paper in creative writing. Most of us in the tutorial were young—your age now—in our late teens or early 20s. We were reasonably insecure and unreasonably ambitious. So, when the tutors on the course spoke of “finding your voice,” the task of writing became infused with a rather vague but strong desire to become someone inspired with something inspiring to say. There is such a thing as a distinctive way a writer has in language; the mystery of artistic inspiration—of a gift of insight and means arising out of patient craft, learning, and sometimes something more—is a thing in God’s good world. But the invitation to “find your voice” typically sent us off to flounder about in the shallows of the self rather than pay attention to words and poetic forms. By contrast, when we approach art as making, we learn to pay attention to the stuff we have to work with: clay, light, the pentatonic scale, the limits and possibilities of an aging body, or the mongrelised possibilities of English.

As you learn more and more to pay attention, you’ll become aware of many important and fruitful things. Because you’re a creature making with the stuff of creation, you’ll always have to deal with limits—material, moral, spiritual. Actually, the fantasy of making art with no limits is just that—a fantasy. It tends to generate art that is incoherent, or poorly made, or profane, or otherwise lacking integrity. To discern a limit (again, a limit might not be material—it could be moral or spiritual) is to intuit a call to faithfulness: faithfulness to the order of creation and the inventive possibilities this order calls forth. That’s why experienced artists are often people who have learned humility and patience because they understand the invitation and goodness of limit. They’re also good learners; they never assume that they’ve mastered the possibilities of their medium but remain in creation and of creation. So, there’s good work to do: they work hard at their craft, not falling for the lie that all an artist has to do is authentically express themselves. As workers, they’ve wisely accepted that the world is not as it will yet be, and they expect a certain degree of frustration and futility. Acceptance like this leaves the way open for gratitude. As a poet, what I really want is to receive the gifts of creation well and to give them well to the nourishment of giver and receiver alike.

Since we’re talking about nourishment, I want to say something here about art and community. My formation as an artist has been marked by the culture of Western modernity. In large part, the artist is conceived of as individual and—typically—as a radical. They break old forms to make it new. The artist is an alienated genius who stands against convention and tradition, solitary in their brilliance and progressive iconoclasm. She or he is responsible to no-one. In short, they’re lonely, brilliant, selfish, and against the world. But I want to make a case for the artist in community; given your family, I think you’ll intuitively get this! Other hands bring us into the world, other hands will usher us into the Lord’s rest, and all that falls between is a matter of life with God and life with others. Hopefully, you can connect the dots here with God’s purposes for creation and with the life opened to us by Jesus. Artists need to learn to be responsive and responsible. This means, I think, community forms of art-making—collaboration, ensembles, cross-disciplinary work (music and theatre people know this well). But, more and more, I’ve been feeling that we need to find new ways of offering art to our communities—churches included—in such ways that people are nourished through art; it might even include a way of correcting and strengthening our art because, shoot, sometimes our art needs correction!

OK, so, good making requires that we pay attention to the medium we’re working in, to the process, and to coherence of what we make—its nourishing integrity. All this rests on a certain kind of confidence, an agreement to be a human creature in creation, a creature called to cultivate (yes, the link with “culture” is meaningful here) the stuff of creation in ways that bring glory to our maker. That confidence is, yes, thankful and humble; but it is also venturesome, wondering, active, and amazed. Sensing the sheer goodness in things, it sniffs at the glorious rind of the world, itching to peel it like a ripe orange. It just loves being! It wants to get into the nature of things, under the zesty skin of it all, to speak orange back to the maker of oranges ….

Two more related points before a final meditation. Along with delight and praise, we’ve talked about bread—about making and about nourishment. I also want to mention two sources of nourishment. First (this was one of your questions), prayer. It seems to me that a longing for prayer haunts the contemporary artist. Since Romanticism (another email!), artists have reached for words like “inspiration” and “genius” and “spiritual” to explain aspects of the experience of art-making; indeed, some of these have been used to make a case for why artists might be special and misunderstood. But, if it’s the case that art-making is one instance of our creaturely calling—an instance that is very attentive to the world, highly deliberate, and inclined to be humble and cued to delight—then it makes sense that art-making might be ghosted by longing for communion with God.

Let me anchor this in Scripture. Psalm 19 ends: “May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart/be pleasing in your sight,/Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer” (verse 14). The psalmist is very aware that this priestly office of “voicing creation’s praise” is only possible with God. God is the artist’s master—“Lord”—but also his security and the one who redeems—who pays for his freedom. The psalm anticipates—longs for—God with us, for Jesus. Through Jesus Christ, we are redeemed from sin, evil, and death. When we acknowledge Jesus as our Lord, the Holy Spirit binds us to him so that we begin to share in this new humanity. We’re enabled to trust God as Jesus did. Through Jesus and by the gift of the Holy Spirit, we can begin to take up the priestly office of voicing creation’s praise. Set in a new relationship with God, the words of our mouths, the meditation of our hearts, and the making of our hands are now subject to a call to holiness. We learn to be honest with God about our sin, and we learn to seek God’s forgiveness more and more readily. We’re less enthralled by the self-determinations of our hearts and more interested in the heart of God, who is our Rock and our Redeemer and who secures and enables our whole art-making enterprise. We realise that the Holy Spirit isn’t about feelings of inspiration but about sharing in the life opened to us in Christ. To return, then, to prayer: prayer is this communion with God by the Holy Spirit. It’s not the special preserve of the arts, but the arts surely need prayer. It’s in prayer that the artist’s intuitions are given warrant or chastened, their inclinations given shape and made fruitful, and their making laid open to God’s gifts. How do you do this? Well, you learn, over and over, to let prayer—disciplined and delighting in communion with God—infuse all of your art-making process, from rumination to exhibition and beyond.

The second point is about Scripture. I mentioned the call to voice creation’s praise and how this included lament—a lifting of all of creation to God. It raises the particular question of what an artist might say, or dance, or paint, or what have you. Let’s not talk here about art’s “content” or “message”; we both know that art-making aims for an integrity where, at best, the means and meaning are one. So, if I mention Scripture here, I’m not saying, “As a Christian in the arts, you need to be painting biblical themes” or even “You need to develop a Biblical worldview” if by this you mean only the imposition of an interpretive frame. Let me venture something. As an artist, you’re called to bear witness—to pay attention to the world but also to speak of the world faithfully. As a follower of Jesus, your life and your work may become radiant with God’s life, speaking to and of God faithfully. Bearing witness is not only evangelistic but also prophetic: by representation, but also by its existence in the world, such art “speaks” about the truth of things. It is interested in what the world means, in what is wrong with the world, in who God is, and in how God responds to the world. It is not sentimental or naïve—it is faithful, unafraid, and joyful. It encompasses not only the desolation of Good Friday but also the limbo of Holy Saturday, and the scandalous exultation of Easter Day (I owe this brilliant interpretive key for whole art to Jeremy Begbie, who offered it in a seminar at the University of St Andrews). Desolation and also joy are both characteristic of such art. This understanding of things—the truth about God, about the world, about myself—is given through Holy Scripture. How do you do this? Well, each day, you take up the book and you eat it: you put its words in your mouth, chew on them in your heart, swallow them down into your life, and let them come out your pores.

Given all I’ve raised here, how should we think about the artist’s job and its place in God’s purposes? I want to suggest a final parable for the arts improvised from a gospel story—a kind of picture about what it is like to be an artist who keeps company with Jesus. In this, I’m playing with some of the spiritualised ways that Christians have read this story down through the ages. Luke recounts the story of Jesus and the hungry crowd (it’s Luke 9:10–17). The people have followed Jesus into a desolate place where he teaches them. As the day draws on, the disciples urge Jesus to send the crowd away so they can get food. Jesus responds, “You give them something to eat.” The instruction seems absurd; the headcount is 5000, and that’s just the men—far too many mouths to feed. The disciples’ response is striking: they don’t point out the odds; they’re not sarcastic; they don’t refuse. Unaware of what is about to happen, they yield to Jesus’s initiative and give him what they have.

What they have is the work of human hands from the stuff of creation: bread and prepared fish. Jesus does four important things. First, he takes these things. God the Son, through whom all things are made, receives back as his own what humans have made of them. In this, only he knows what they will become as God’s gift. Second, he looks up to heaven and blesses the bread and fish. That is, he announces that these things are not only from God but also to be for God; nothing else may lay claim to these works of human hands—they have been reclaimed for God’s purposes. Third, he breaks them. Whatever the baker and fisher intended, Jesus intends that these things should be opened up and made eatable, portioned out to those who need them. Finally, he gives—literally, he keeps on giving them. In Jesus’s hands, the gift of creation, which by human art was made a gift to God, now becomes food for the people. This food is not only nourishment but reveals God’s character and saving presence in Jesus.

I won’t spell this out further for you, Friend. You were always a canny listener! Suffice to say, there’s something here for the artist who is called to make good things—nourishing things—from the stuff of creation and who, with Jesus, looks out over the hungry crowd. Best to yield to his initiative and give him all we have.

With much love and in anticipation of more!

John