If you had asked me as I was growing up, or even as a young woman, who the greatest artist was who had ever lived, I would have answered you immediately, Michelangelo. Even today, having been exposed to so many artists with different styles and talents, he remains my first favorite and most highly esteemed. He was the reason that I chose not to paint, actually. I wanted someone like him to teach me, someone who could apprentice me as he did his students. What can I say? I'm a [recovering] perfectionist, and to me, his work came close to perfection! I figured if I couldn't learn to paint like he did, why paint at all? Perhaps I could excel at some other type of art.
When my Father God told me it was His plan for me to paint and upset all my plans, I could never have imagined what He had in store for me. After that short course mentioned in my first posting on this blog, He took me in hand Himself. He told me that He was going to teach me to paint by His Spirit. He said that if I wanted His anointing, that I must listen carefully, and only paint when He said to paint. He told me that when He asked me to stop, I was to clean up and put everything away. He said it would be a discipline. (Isn't that what I said to Him when I told Him why I didn't paint?) He put me in front of a canvas on an easel and had me pray for His direction. He would show me what to do, and I would do a little bit. Then He would ask me to stand back and look, and He would show me something that needed to be done. I'd approach the canvas and do it, rather hesitantly, I assure you! Sometimes, I would be using a color on a spot where He had asked me to put it, and I'd see another place I would like to use that same color. I'd ask Him if I could, and sometimes He would tell me no, not to touch that. He'd then show me where else I could put the color, or show me something else He wanted me to do. It was a time consuming and very slow process as I learned to hear Him direct me. There were many times I felt I was on a roll, and wanted to keep going when He had me stop. It was about experiencing the anointing, and only painting "under the anointing". When it lifted, I had to quit.
Are you disbelieving this? I know it's kinda crazy sounding. But this is truly what happened. I couldn't have Michelangelo, but I did have the Holy Spirit, and He had a plan. We had friends in California, where we lived at the time, and the wife of the couple had recently become an intercessor for Korea. While having dinner at their home, we discussed the possibility of getting my help decorating the living room and making it more colorful. They commissioned me to do a large painting to go over their couch, and I began to research Korea for ideas for it. I prayerfully put together a rough idea for the painting with real elements of the land and some real costumes for dancers, etc. The whole theme was to give her inspiration for her prayers. And as I began to paint, the Lord directed me which parts to paint in what order and what to leave alone; where to place the colors and how to use them. It began to take shape, but in a very different way than if I had simply forged ahead with my own way of thinking from the sketches I'd made.
This painting was so large that I had hung it on our living room wall to paint. One morning I was having my devotional time sitting on the couch across the room and happened to glance up. My breath caught. I couldn't believe my eyes, so I looked back down at my Bible. A few moments later I looked up again, and still saw what I'd thought I had seen the first time. I got up and went over to look more closely at the painting, and sure enough, it was still visible, not a trick of early morning lighting or of my faulty vision. I sat back down and began to ask God what in the world this meant. Our daughter came in the room and saw me looking dumbstruck. I asked her to look at the center of the painting and tell me if she noticed anything unusual. And she saw it, too. So, let me explain...
A lot of the painting was already in progress: a mountain range that was real; a waterfall that was real with an imagined pool at the bottom ... But right by that there was an area that I'd left blank at the direction of Holy Spirit. Only now there were soft brush strokes in that area that clearly defined a Jewish patriarch, head to toe - or hem of robe. His head was slightly cocked to the side, and all of his features were defined, including his beard. Everything was even in the right proportions! His arms were covered in his robe as if his hands were clasped at his pelvis, and with a few strokes, all the lighting of this figure was correct, as if planned and executed on purpose. Only I didn't even remember having that paint color on my brush, much less making these strokes! (Had I cleaned my brush there???) And God said to leave it alone! I was in shock. Why was there a Jewish patriarch in the almost exact center of a painting about Korea?
This began a time when other figures, faces and images began to show up in the painting. They just showed up! None of them was created intentionally by me. I would see them after they'd been created. Once in a while, my Teacher would let me make one a little clearer, but I never put any of them in on purpose or decided what any of these images should be. And to be crystal clear, any changes I made to faces I was shown were tiny ones. It wasn't that I saw a hint of a face and then fleshed it out. God was putting faces in this painting!!! And eventually, it began to make a little bit of sense to me. God was putting images of real people into the painting! Why those particular people, I had no idea. There was an African American with an obvious 70's afro hairstyle. There was a row of Catholic nuns. There was an Indian chief that Holy Spirit told me was a Cherokee. There was one face the Lord said was a New York cab driver. Huh? What was going on?
On the right side of the painting I had planned to have a curving path coming from the distant mountain range, with Korean dancers in all the glorious colors of their traditional dance costumes, to become the focus in the foreground. That wasn't to be! Holy Spirit kept me from painting them, over and over when I would point to the empty right side, and He would redirect me to another part of the painting. When He did begin to have me paint on the right side, it was to put in a grassy expanse that had a large green face 'under' it, like a Mother Earth image. The path was placed, but not defined, and as it began to take shape, He had me paint the 'road' coming forward from a mere tan path to stones at the middle distance which became figures almost like popsicle sticks up close, with mere slashes of color. These were Korean people coming to the baptismal pool at the feet of the Jewish patriarch. And in the end, they never got enough definition to make them appear "real". The "real" looking faces were those of the hidden images.
After it was finished, Holy Spirit told me that all the faces He had created in this painting for intercession were of actual people who had at one time in history, or were still, praying for Korea. Certainly, He did not mean they were the only ones. But these were the "real" people. The ones who were coming to baptism were not yet "real". They were becoming real.
And the Jewish patriarch? He was Father Abraham. You may say, he couldn't have known of Korea then. That's what I said. But he prayed for all the nations of his time, and those to come. Those he knew of, and those he trusted I AM to watch over about which he had no knowledge. He was a man of prayer. And one of the confirmations of this prayerfulness for others was that, as the painting came to completion, in the area of his robe covered arms there formed infants in utero, those yet to come. It looked very obviously that he was protecting them in his arms and the folds of his robe.
Abraham Lincoln's face is in there, too. There are so many images that I didn't even find them all, though I found dozens. God promised me that others would see ones He hadn't shown me yet. When the painting was hung in our friends' living room, their 7 year old son came in and instantly saw another one.
There is one more face I will tell you about here. At the bottom right of this canvas I painted a young Korean mother with her infant peacefully sleeping in a traditional wrapping on her back. She is large, as if you are looking over her shoulder at Korea in a photograph. Her face is turned toward the viewer and her expression is of deep distress. She is the call to intercession for her people, her country. The title of this painting is her question to the viewer: Will You Pray for Them?
I still love Michelangelo. Now I realize that I will not paint like him in my lifetime. It's ok. Because I am becoming God's apprentice. I am learning to let His Spirit live through me and breathe on my canvases. I've asked Jesus for His anointing, that what I paint will be for His purposes, not mine. I've asked Him to touch other people with what He helps me create, and to bless others by the presence of these paintings in their homes, offices, or wherever they go. Sometimes what He does through me is obvious, and sometimes I haven't got a clue. That's ok, too. He gets to be the Master and I get to be the disciple, the apprentice; and I'm becoming more and more useful as an instrument of His love in this world. :-)
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