Dawn Maureen Art

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Here are some of my paintings, drawings, and arts and crafts. I work in oils, acrylics, pastel, crayon, ink, pencil, and collage.

Below is some of my photography. It's amateur point and shoot, but I still enjoy doing it.
Looking through the viewfinder helps me to focus
on the details in my surroundings and it helps me to enjoy the peaceful silence nature gives to us. I threw some still life arrangements in the mix as well !

God comes to us in the things we know best and can verify most easily, the things of our everyday life, apart from which we cannot understand ourselves. ~ Pope John Paul II (Fides et Ratio - Faith and Reason)

In producing a work, artists express themselves to the point where their work becomes a unique disclosure of their own being, of what they are and of how they are what they are. And there are endless examples of this in human history. In shaping a masterpiece, the artist not only summons his work into being, but also in some way reveals his own personality by means of it. For him art offers both a new dimension and an exceptional mode of expression for his spiritual growth. Through his works, the artist speaks to others and communicates with them. ~ Pope John Paul II

There is a freedom, a joy and a connection that you feel when you use your imagination, but when you do not recognize the Source of your imagination, those experiences can be an end unto themselves. You will need to foster an atmosphere in which imagination is kept in its proper role. Worship is where you can experience God's character, his Word is where you know his will, and prayer is where you commune with him. ~ Alice Bass, The Creative Life, A Workbook for Unearthing the Christian Imagination

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Here is an interesting article where Catholic Culture is interviewing traditional sacred artists.

http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=688&CFID=2724224&CFTOKEN=85923606

I don't believe abstract or contemporary art is bad in churches, but I believe they are right in saying that we have pretty much abandoned traditional art in churches in the West. Maybe it's because we are a Go Go culture where everyone is in a hurry and no longer having time to paint detailed art? I don't know, but I'm reading all of the arguments from all sides to try and get an overall picture of what is happening in the christian arts.

My art is all over the place, from abstract to realism, and I'm still waiting to see where God is going to direct me. I'm self taught, so I'm just going to keep studying about this.

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Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees takes off his shoes,
The rest sit around and pluck blackberries.

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Dear artists, you well know that there are many impulses which, either from within or from without, can inspire your talent. Every genuine inspiration, however, contains some tremor of that “breath” with which the Creator Spirit suffused the work of creation from the very beginning. Overseeing the mysterious laws governing the universe, the divine breath of the Creator Spirit reaches out to human genius and stirs its creative power. He touches it with a kind of inner illumination which brings together the sense of the good and the beautiful, and he awakens energies of mind and heart which enable it to conceive an idea and give it form in a work of art. It is right then to speak, even if only analogically, of “moments of grace”, because the human being is able to experience in some way the Absolute who is utterly beyond. ~ Pope John Paul II, Letter to Artists

"There is in us an instinct for newness, for renewal, for a liberation of creative power. We seek to awaken in ourselves a force which really changes our lives from within. And yet the same instinct tells us that this change is a recovery of that which is deepest, most original, most personal in ourselves. To be born again is not to become somebody else, but to become ourselves." - Thomas Merton

Spiritual formation isn’t merely about the end result; it’s about the formative process itself. It’s about the mysterious artistic activity of the Spirit from the dawn of creation to the sunset each evening, in which previously unconnected elements are fashioned — formed — into a coherent whole. ~- Sarah Arthur (The God-Hungry Imagination: The Art of Storytelling for Postmodern Youth Ministry)

The museum truly shows how Christianity and culture, faith and art, the divine and the human, constantly intertwine,” Pope Benedict (speaking of the Vatican Museum.)

God therefore called man into existence, committing to him the craftsman's task. Through his “artistic creativity” man appears more than ever “in the image of God”, and he accomplishes this task above all in shaping the wondrous “material” of his own humanity and then exercising creative dominion over the universe which surrounds him. With loving regard, the divine Artist passes on to the human artist a spark of his own surpassing wisdom, calling him to share in his creative power. Obviously, this is a sharing which leaves intact the infinite distance between the Creator and the creature, as Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa made clear: “Creative art, which it is the soul's good fortune to entertain, is not to be identified with that essential art which is God himself, but is only a communication of it and a share in it”.(1)That is why artists, the more conscious they are of their “gift”, are led all the more to see themselves and the whole of creation with eyes able to contemplate and give thanks, and to raise to God a hymn of praise. This is the only way for them to come to a full understanding of themselves, their vocation and their mission. ~ Pope John Paul II, Letter to Artists

Dawn Maureen Art

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Tuesday, April 14, 2009

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