Last week my friend John contacted me and asked me if I would do a couple live paintings with him next week at his church, Glad Tidings Assembly of God in West Lawn, PA. Of course I jumped at the chance. John and I have always really liked painting together, his church is really cool, plus this will be different than anything I have done before. Should make for a good evening but I thought I’d share a little about the process of collaborating here.
The theme of the evening is creation as in the seven days of creation. We are tasked with creating seven paintings in a two hour period, and while we have worked together many times and bounced ideas off each other many times this will be our first time working together on the same pieces before an audience, so a few things had to be worked out ahead of time.
First was vision: We had a phone conversation about this where John described his vision for the pieces. I want this piece to be his vision. It’s his “gig”, his home church, filled with the people he knows and loves and frankly he’s amazing. He described his vision to me over the phone and I got a really clear picture. Then we got together and I saw his sketches and they were really great and completely different from what I imagined. Pictures and words don’t always line up.
Next is prayer: So we were both seeing something and the two things were different. As I said earlier, I wanted this to be his vision, but we ended up getting a little stuck. We were both sketching and trying to figure out how to make this work and not getting very far. Then the lightbulb went on. This was probably the first time we have ever gotten together that we jumped right in and didn’t pray? No wonder we were confused. We prayed and I kid you not, the next thing to come out of John’s mind and onto the paper was pure gold. If we’re going to work together to do God’s will, God needs to be consulted frequently.
I want to say one other thing on the subject of prayer. There are times in art ministry where there is a pressure to be “Spirit led.” I am all about that concept, but what does it mean? Some folks would look at our advance preparation and say it’s not “Spirit led” and I disagree. Had we just shown up next Saturday and started banging out what was on each of our minds, it might have been good but it could have also gone into chaos. (Consider what might happen with two artists with radically different styles and two different visions, trying to paint the same seven canvasses in the same two hour period.) To me “Spirit led” is being led by the Spirit through the process, which can include the preparation time. Having a plan in advance is not a sign that something is less Spiritual, it simply means the Spirit led you to be a little more prepared.
To be continued tomorrow… If you’re in the area next Saturday, August 3, come on over and check it out for yourself.
AMOKArts 