understood?
No one can know in advance how one will be used, or when, or what one’s life will count for in the long run. The young Pablo Casals, while pouring his life energy into years of practice on the cello, could not guess that when Franco came to power, he would stop playing for three years, and that the silence would be heard throughout Spain as if the streets were full of demonstrators….
When the need for bread is met we discover that we have other hungers, and none so deep as the hunger to be understood. The artist helps us to interpret, understand and communicate feeling. When the artist is successful we are led into communion with ourselves and with the world, and the solitary work becomes a communal work. For want of this we walk on parched land.
Elizabeth O’Connor
And so artists keep on wrestling . . . . .
The insert below is happening at my place. Hopefully a space where we can understand and be understood and out of it change occur in us.
“Naomi and I thought it would be good to gather those with serious questions about art and faith for an– everything allowed – time of discussion. Bring your questions on a slip of paper and we will put them in a hat and whatever gets drawn we will discuss. No expectations, no ready answers, just a think tank to count the cost of true discipleship as an artist.”
Betty Spackman (installation artist, painter and author of A Profound Weakness: Christians and Kitsch)