The idea was to include day and night, winter and summer, mountains, plains and ocean in one piece!
My goal was to express the sacred beauty and presence of God I experience living in this varied landscape. Wearing this stole in our Green Season rites and rituals in our churches is a way of expressing gratitude to the Creator for such a wonderful home. My hope is to see this sacredness celebrated in our churches.
The seed for this stole design came from a painting I completed in 2006, celebrating life at Holden Village in the North Cascades. Can you see in the two vertical strips, one yellow and the other purple, one summer and one winter, the start of the design?
This is the third year in a row St. Marks has commissioned me to make a banner supporting their annual theme. This year’s theme, “Who is My Neighbor,” I’m particularly happy to be supporting.
My assignment was to take inspiration from these places:
The hymn “Jesu, Jesu, Fill Us with Your Love”
ingoring the traditional boundaries that keep people apart
Dan Erlander’s drawings from his book “Manna and Mercy”
He Qi’s painting “Peace Be Still”
My calligrapher friend Laura Norton designed the lettering. She always does a beautiful job. LauraNortonLetterArts@gmail.com
The design for this piece came very quickly, it was the first sketch I made. . I was indeed inspired by the simplicity of Dan Erlander’s paintings, and even more so from He Qi’s art, where color and shapes are strong and flat.
Detail “Who Is My Neighbor
I actually “quoted” some passages from He Qi’s figures, (like I did from Picasso in the painting “Abu Graib and the Twin Towers: A Lesson from Picasso” see image below) Because I was playing with He Qi’s style, I made a note of that right on the piece. I gave credit to him on the banner, writing in the signature area “In the style of He Qi”. That’s the turquoise bar on the bottom left side of the banner above.
It’s interesting learning from other artists this way. I went to Picasso when I was trying to do a painting about war, torture and other atrocities of Abu Graib. You can see easy references to Picasso’s “Guernica” here, all through my piece.
So I gave credit to Picasso in my title, which then has a double meaning. Picasso instructed me in art, and he instructs us all in the terror of war.
He Qi, thanks for teaching me about the power of simple flat forms and color to tell a powerful story.
