Guardians: Sam with Painting

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Sam with Painting

As I was painting Guardians on our Fall Retreat at Kanuga one of my SI students encouraged me to pause to see that the marks I had painted for the torsos looked like smeared blood.

Sam said it reminded her of the first Passover and the mark placed above the doors to prevent the angel of death from taking the first born children of the people of Israel.

Sam kept this one for her residence hall room.

I also gave two other pieces from this series away this week to people at Wofford who were interested in these images for personal reasons.

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Why Guardians?

For God will command the angels concerning you
to guard you in all of your ways.

On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.

Psalm 91:11-12

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake.
from The Book of Common Prayer

I began painting angels on strips of wood that were left over from a classroom project. I gave these pieces to friends and family when they were going through a time of grief or trouble. I place Guardians in the corners of my life where I have felt the most afraid or alone.

My family encouraged me to begin painting Guardians that could be given as gifts. My mother says, "All of us have at least one dark corner in our lives." These angel paintings were featured in This Threshold: Writing on the End of Life, published in 2007 by the Hub City Writers Project.

Winged guardians have a deep history in the iconography of almost every world religion. Angels have walked a thin line between necessary players in Judeo-Christian stories and problematic presences that were purged from the canon. Despite century after century of occupying the margins, a recent Time Magazine report indicates just how persistent guardian angels prove to be in the American consciousness.

More than half of all Americans believe they have been helped by a guardian angel in the course of their lives, according to a new poll by the Baylor University Institute for Studies of Religion. In a poll of 1700 respondents, 55% answered affirmatively to the statement, "I was protected from harm by a guardian angel." The responses defied standard class and denominational assumptions about religious belief; the majority held up regardless of denomination, region or education — though the figure was a little lower (37%) among respondents earning more than $150,000 a year...

The Baylor study tested other statements that might indicate a similar belief in the supernatural intruding into everyday personal experience — "I heard the voice of God speaking to me"; and "I received a miraculous physical healing." But far fewer people claimed to have had those experiences. This raises the possibility that guardian angels, which famously support an industry of sentimental accessories, are just so darned attractive that they exist in a charmed belief niche of their own...

What's interesting about the Baylor findings on guardian angel experiences is that they cross all boundaries. They have scriptural writ (in Psalm 91 and elsewhere). They are clearly experiential. And guardian angels are a prominent part of Catholic belief that happens to float freely outside of a sacrament. The cross-spectrum legitimacy of the notion of angelic interventions may free Americans to engage in the kind of folk faith that is part of almost any religious system but is not always officially acknowledged. 1

In my own experience, sharing these pieces is often personally problematic. For years, I marginalized these works as nicknacks, understating the powerful personal response that people had to the Guardians I paint. Recently I began releasing them into the world in places that have been significant in my life. I documented these ephemeral installations in a blog, and they were featured by The Wooster Collective almost immediately. I was interested and flattered by their description of my work, “a wonderful blend of folk art and street art.”

Versions of these images have also been accepted into numerous gallery settings from solo exhibitions to juried shows. I often doubt what these images will communicate about me in these settings because they come out of such an intuitive place in my spiritual consciousness and art practice. I am always fascinated by the responses my Guardians receive in these settings and the stories they evoke from others.

Painting is often a manual act of contemplative prayer for me. My prayers as I paint Guardians are often deeply rooted in personal pain, fear, and worry. I hope that these Guardians offer a brush with hope and comfort to the people who find them on the street, encounter them in a gallery, or entertain the presence of these paintings in their home.

I believe that the images themselves are far less important than the power of the rich global tradition they invoke and the divinity they can point towards right here on earth.

1 (Retrived on September 30,2008 from http://www.time.com/time/nation
/article/0,8599,1842179,00.html
?cnn=yes)

Guardians

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Sam with Painting

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