Brushstrokes and Perspectives

If you would have told me years ago that I would be a landscape painter - and a coastal one at that - I probably would have scoffed in your face. I never imagined myself to be one to paint landscapes; I was under the assumption that they had to be perfect, complex, and realistic, all of which did not appeal too much to me. My mind is constantly flooded with little details, so the thought of having to paint each individual leaf in a forest scene gave me a headache. I went to art to get away from the details and rules that my mind tends to be bound by, not to be consumed by them.

You can imagine my personal shock when one day I picked up my brush and began to paint the coast. The hazy, late afternoon marsh reeds silhouetted by a harsh yet mesmerizing sun saturated my soul. The crisp, gentle sound of the palm leaves brushing against each other in their seemingly endless sun salutations played on a loop in my mind. I figured I had found my muse.

I was surprised at how much freedom there was to be found in expressing yourself through a landscape - what once was assumed to be rigid and time-consuming turned out to be ever-flowing and light.

“This is me,” God seemed to be softly telling me.

As I finished my first painting of the captivating Charleston marches, I felt a tug inside to paint the scene yet again, this time with an entirely new color scheme. After painting the marshes for a third time in a new way, I realized how I needed to progress with my series.

It’s easy to get held up by what our eyes immediately see, by what our ears first hear, what our hands first touch. “This is just how it is,” we claim, settling the stirring voice inside that questions if that is entirely true.

What I was gently reminded after completing my first few paintings was that there are so many perspectives in this world to be found; there are an endless amount of ways to regard something as simple as a marsh view at sunset. Likewise, there are an innumerable amount of ways to find the beauty of God throughout our day: in the gentle sway of marsh reeds, in the call of a mourning dove as it is awoken by the morning light, in the frantic shimmers of light flickering across the crashing waves on the shore, in the smiles of our friends, in the very swirls of our fingertips…

Sometimes we settle with who we think God is and what He can do in our lives without giving Him the chance to change our perspective, to prove us wrong, to surprise and humble us yet again. I know I do it all too often.

My soul’s prayer throughout this series was for God to never let my wonder for Him cease; to fill my heart with a yearning to continually find new ways to seek and praise Him. Whether in the stroke of my brush or in the tilt of my head, may God allow my perspective to be ever-challenged.

My hope in this series is simple: that my pieces bring you joy and that they allow you to give God the chance to show Himself to you in new and wonderful ways.