Ways to See

In his thoughtful book “Lifting the Veil,” poet and priest Malcolm Guite refers to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s notion of the “film of familiarity” that we get when we see or hear things too often. We stop noticing the beauty all around us. “How all of us might have a part to play in lifting the veil, removing the film of familiarity, opening our eyes and ears and, most of all our hearts, not only to the ‘loveliness and wonders of the world before, an inexhaustible treasure,’ but also to the one through all these things were made and in whom they hold together?”¹

It was a Saturday morning in Northern Colorado in 2014 when I left my four little kids under the care of their capable dad and drove alone down through Denver and up into the foothills to attend the first ever Christos Collective meeting at the home of Sandy Ceas. Sandy had scoured some online email lists to invite  artists from the Denver area to gather at her home to discuss what a group of Christian artists could do together. Twelve artists attended. We chatted with each other about being artists, being Christians, and Sandy presented a vision of what we could become.

Before that meeting, I had participated in a couple of co-op art groups, and I already valued being in a community of artists. This new group, however, was just the thing I needed at that time: support and encouragement from like-minded brothers and sisters traveling the same road. We were artists who wanted to make meaningful artwork and we wanted to share it with people who cared. That cozy meeting in the mountains south of Denver was where Christos Collective began.

I had earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree back in the 1990s but being a member of Christos Collective has helped me grow and develop as an adult artist. Often, the group chooses a theme, then discusses the subject for months, encouraging each other along the way as we make individual works related to the topic. When the topic was “reclaim,” I made a large personal piece which included my mother, my grandmother, and me sitting around a table trying to be hospitable despite our differences, reminiscent of Rublev’s “Hospitality of Abraham.” When we worked on a show theme of “the cross,” I decided to make that personal too, by having Jesus carry the cross down a crowded street in more modern times; I made sure to include myself in the artwork. We have had many shows over the years. I would not have made as much art nor would I have thought as deeply about my art if I had not been a part of this group. 

The friendships between artists have also been an important factor for me. If I have to travel from my home in Northern Colorado to a monthly Christos Collective meeting in Denver, there is always someone to carpool with, where we inevitably discuss art and other random things. Time together as we install work has given us time to chat; Christmas parties and plein air gatherings in summer help us connect, too.

In my art I want to tell a story, to help people consider what they may not have otherwise. Lifting that veil is what we as Christian visual artists try to do. We want to help give viewers one more way to see the wonders of God’s world and his love.

“God has many ways of lifting the veil,” Guite concludes, “many ways of encouraging his church, many ways of rousing the world from its deadly slumber, but it is my conviction that one of those ways, one of the most effective and salient ways in our time, is by kindling our imaginations, by speaking to us through the poets, the storytellers, the playwrights, the artists, the filmmakers, by opening our eyes afresh to the rich poetry of scripture itself.”

“In this sense, the Christian’s life is to be an art work. The Christian’s life is to be a thing of truth and also a thing of beauty in the midst of a lost and despairing world.”²

¹ 2021 Lifting the Veil; Imagination and the Kingdom of God, Malcolm Guite 

²1973 Art and the Bible, Francis A. Schaeffer

Christ Carrying the Cross

Acrylic and ink on Board

57x34, 2017