Painting: an expression of an inward Apocalypse: final series of three (no quite done)

This is still a work in progress. But this is what has happened so far. I prepared three supports each 32x48 in. tempered MDF board. I sat before them in waiting worship. I thought about my proposal, which suggested that these pieces would follow my previous works by calling viewers into deeper relationships with God. Rather suddenly (as is often the case for me) it came upon me that the panel on the far left should say, “Trust,” the middle “Surrender,” and the right hand one “Remain”. I got a pencil and did this. You will notice that the first four lines on each panel run in a series from one painting to the next: ‘God knocks,’ ‘we answer,’ ‘commune together,’ etc. The quotes and statements, which follow those lines, are elaborations upon the unifying theme for the paintings: ‘Fear not’ extrapolates upon the concept of trust or at least offers us a quality of trust.

Trust
God knocks
God is always present
Believe that God has hour best
interest in mind
Fear not.
God does not want to be feared
Rather fear stands as an impasse before
faith (that is to say trust). (A leader who is
feared may be obeyed but they are no
respected). If I believe that God is ever present,
if I believe that God cares for me then fear of
suffering and sorrow reflects a lack of my faith
that “thou art with me” even in those moments when all
evil might face me. Though the flesh might be
beaten from my bones “ thou art with me” giving
meaning to my life in the face of all evil and
harm

surrender
we answer
we knock
turn over control of our
actions
to God
Smile! For we are Called
To a most joyous surrender
death of our will, which is apart from that of God, does not mark
loss of self, but rather a destruction
of all that which stood in the way of
us being who we really are
Beyond all the money and fear
we are all immeasurably beautiful, it
is this self, which God strives to
release
[written up the left side of this panel]
Ok, yes, Luther, by faith alone, but only if you concede that faith, which does not result in works, is not faith but a lie.

Remain
Commune together
He answers
help Him continue to dictate
our actions
“In the Light which reveals
all of this, Stand, neither
go to the right hand, nor
the left (Joshua [hb= the Lord is Salvation,
Gr. = Iesous -> En. = Jesus] 1:7)
What a blessing we have
that God is ever present
eternally yearning for our
return if we leave

Shortly after writing the ‘titles’ on the panels (“Surrender” etc.) I started getting images in my head of a series of corresponding images, which clarified or solidified between Trust and Remain. At this point I again reentered a space of waiting worship. BAM! I fell out of my seat (partially literally) and looking in the direction of the sound I saw a whitish pigeon falling away from my window. The pigeon being a city bird it left an oily print of itself on the glass, and I being and artist began to draw. From the contours of the squished bird arose another opening.
God becomes increasingly tangible as our awareness and relation ship to him grows.
Even at the point of Trusting God- God remains incredibly abstract, despite our glimmers of God and passing memories of past encounters.
Though we may have surrendered in the past and danced with God our memory of those encounters could barely hope to do justice to the shadow of those moments much less their reality.
It is this incomplete memory, which calls us home. We are left with a remembrance. There was something special, which cannot be recalled, and yet we have a sense of lacking.
The act of Holly Surrender sends God flooding back into consciousness. His potential is illuminated before us and though we can only imagine permanent residence in this state the reality of that possibility becomes evident and the joyous empowerment of that prospect becomes a lure before us.
Oh, and if we stay, if we let God steer our lives despite all social awkwardness and strife, whether it be physical or financial or otherwise. Oh then we will know God in All Glory—experientially.

I have attempted to show this by turning God into a pigeon (or rather by using that of God, which is ever present in pigeons, to illustrate our relationship to the Divine). The painting of Trust has a very abstracted painting of a pigeon—six lines—and drawn in saturated orange as an expression of hope, which is not necessarily grounded in experience. At the point of Surrender God is real, and the painting needs to reflect that but even when we are with God, God is so much more that I had to keep this pigeon small. I didn’t intend for it to be quite that little but I quite like it now. I consider these two paintings finished, which is always a good time to take some criticism (although I would still love to here that they are perfect). It took me a while to figure out Remain but ever since the eye presented its self it has felt great. The eye isn’t even present in Trust and its only a black dot in Surrender how fitting that Remain might show us all that we have been missing: the dry wrinkled curves of skill surrounding brilliant color. By the way I am not being creative with my color choices. When I started looking for pigeon eyes on the internet I was blown away by how many close up photos there are and then I found out that pigeons eyes are jogged in FFA competitions and the like.