Art is Spirit Incarnate

Artists can be the prophets and inspiration for real change in our society.

Why do we do art?

Art is an exploration and expression of our many life stories and experiences. It’s a way of communicating the depth, breadth and height of living life; illustrating all of its challenges and set backs, joys and wonders.

As artists what are our passions? What makes us angry and frustrated? What gives us inspiration? Can we see past the propaganda we are fed by the powers that be to discover truth? Can we put our passions on a page and make it sing with colour and emotion? Can we show the truth of life lived as humans, all our loves, our wonder, our passions, and desires? Can we peer past the curtains that mask then truth of life lived as ordinary people faced often with despair and unhappiness at how life is going along. Where is hope to be found and beauty? can we just show pretty pictures and not react to oppression and lies.

The cracks and contradictions of the systems of dominant power are within them. Even the art world Which too is dominated by big money and corporate elites Deciding what is great art and what isn’t for their own design and purpose.

So what do we do with that is my question for all of you out there? Life is breath taking and precious and as artists we have a mandate to bring out the light, but no light shows without their contrasting values. Its the darkness that brings forth the light.

My Background

My parents emigrated from Danmark to Canada in 1952 where I was born. We moved back to Danmark for 6 years and then we came to Montreal Canada. A few years later we eventually settled down in Vancouver in 1960. I started my art studies in a 3 year Visual and Performing Arts Program at John Oliver High School in Vancouver, BC. Went on to complete a sociology degree at University of Alberta and began two years of my masters in that discipline before transferring to LTS the lutheran Theological seminary in Saskatoon. I have been doing pastoral work on and off since, with always a focus on my art as the years passed by.

Over my career as an artist I have exhibited, in Vancouver, Edmonton and more recently in Haida Gwaii BC. I became a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, was disabled with a back injury some years later and then went back to my art full time as a way to express my pain and hope for something else. I have since turned it into a healing expression of the fragility of life in spiritual terms. The time not working had given me the ability to continue developing my art and later it kept flourishing in parallel to my part time working life in the Lutheran Church. I have had the privilege to learn from and work with some fantastic mentors.

Art is essentially a spiritual endeavour, both bring out the beauty of life and sometimes as a prophetic voice as life enters its difficult phases Politically and socially we need imaginative prophetic voices as we are entering into tumultuous times, Society has always been nasty and brutish and only our compassion and love for each other while working in community keeps the predator hounds at bay.