revelation

I had an amazing day in the studio today - I made significant progress on "Prophecy" but that wasn't the biggest deal -

As part of this final part of the process, I spend a significant amount of time just staring at the piece, making decisions on what to do or waiting for something to strike me. Sometimes things just strike me and I do it. For this particular piece, I've been a little worried that God hadn't been as involved as I had hoped.

I've been studying a book about Finding Divine Inspiration and this has really been on my mind a lot. At one point the author, J. Scott McElroy, says something to the effect that he doesn't always feel God's presence while he's working, that he'll just ask God to work with him and trust that it happens. I'd been trying to trust but worried that I wasn't letting God be a part of this while I really wanted him to be - I know, pretty thick-headed, but hey, we all are sometimes.

So today I was just trying to paint, not think too much, because I find I do much better that way, though it's a fine line to not thinking enough and messing things up, too. First I had decided to create the green glazed section to the left side, it was something that had come to me earlier, and still seemed like a good idea this morning, so I went with it. Then I started staring. Wondering, is this a good thing? Or did I screw up?

It still seemed like a good thing but not complete, it seemed to need a thin red line between the green and whatever the rest became - and another one across the top, sort of around the curvy horizon line. What? Red lines? I don't use red (almost never, anyway.) What would that look like? Why? And then I saw it - then it hit me, it would be a red cross, red like blood, the sacrifice that the prophecy of the Christ would fulfill and on the other side of the cross is green, new life. This wasn't my idea, I've never done anything quite like this in my work before, but I'll be doing it in this one - the revelation of it hit me so hard it nearly brought tears to my eyes. God is involved, just as I had hoped.