Call of Grace
- 16″ × 22.5″
- acrylic on cotton on wood
In this work, four types of realism converge:
- natural realism – simple relaying of time and place on earth (for example, the photograph on which this painting is based);
- allegorical realism – the presenting of reality as inhabited by human creative or lyrical or narrative content;
- magical realism – the weaving of inexplicable or unexpected content into recognizable reality;
- spiritual realism – deep human truth using reality as a mirror, a reflection of God’s subtle action and work.
The sunflowers were all drawn imaginatively, that is, not from the source photo, suggesting a kind of storied realism, as of flowers that speak (allegorical realism). Art dancing with truth, truth dancing with poetics, the creature’s small part in the Beatific drama of life’s unfolding adventure.
The graced approach to the ineffable, the Holy, the Pure, the forever undying, into heaven, God. A butterfly touches the beyond, the ‘out of the picture’, but still on this side, with proboscis and antenna. For a moment, the image suggests just a painting with a butterfly passing across it, expressing the distinction between simulation and the irreproducible: living, life (magical realism).
The picture depicts a flow of time, from left to right, a journey of seven states (spiritual realism):
- A primordial or original state – seen in light behind the forest interior leaking through the canopy.
- A time of darkness representing a passage into woundedness, disorder, and victim dissipation.
- Leaving confusion, dying to sin and oldness, seeking light and health.
- Re-emergence or being born anew, bare earth marking fresh beginning.
- A phase of profound modesty, humility and healing, symbolized by grass.
- An orderly kingdom where health is normal, flourishing, cultivated, as in crops that reach maturity, that produce seed, and give glory to God, symbolized by sunflowers.
- The butterfly symbolizes triumph of conversion: ultimate maturity, animation, flight, life lived abundantly, freely. The new winged creature forgets its past and “leaves the picture” of self, to serve others, to serve God.
Call of Grace is the un-oiled, patient, silent movement of life, directed by Almighty God, which carries humans forward out of darkness and into ever greater Light.
All darkness, all woundedness, all disorder is called forth by grace out of itself and into the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. Grace is the author of transformation, flesh becoming soul.
The Catholic Church knows the name of Grace, the divine assistance. Grace is a person – Jesus Christ.
