May 24th: The Art of Noticing and Seeing Deeply, with Susan Luckey Higdon.
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The Art of Noticing and Seeing Deeply with Susan Luckey Higdon. Series: Created to Create A Spacious Christianity, First Presbyterian Church of Bend, Oregon. Scripture: John 7:38-39; Psalms 104:10;Isaiah 43:19;Isaiah 58:11.
Ever feel dried up inside, like you’ve lost your spark or can’t quite hear God in the noise of everyday life? This Sunday we’re exploring how creativity, beauty, and simply “noticing” the world around us can open a quiet stream of healing, joy, and grace in ordinary people like us. Whether you see yourself as an artist or not, you’re invited to listen in, rest a bit, and be reminded that your life is a work of art too.
Join us online or in person this Sunday. You’re welcome here.
Transcript:
[Susan Luckey Higdon]: I was both honored and humbled, and frankly terrified to be asked to talk about my creative journey as an artist, especially through the lens of my relationship with God, which for me is intrinsic and interwoven with the art I make. I can’t take credit for the ability to draw and see design; it’s simply a gift I was given coming directly from my grandfather, who, before emigrating from England to the United States at the age of 11, painted watercolors of his English village that were up on the wall in our home, and they were so good. I just love them. As I grew older, I became interested in photography, inspired strongly by Life magazine. If you’re about my age, you will remember that powerful publication. The overall design and quality of the photographs were spectacular. I started cutting out photos and making layouts with headlines to express my own message. It was the 60s, after all. A lot was going on, and I taught myself graphic design that way. I ordered a camera and built a dark room in my closet before my parents realized what I was doing. Everything I saw was a composition. My mother didn’t appreciate the close-ups I took of her face. I thought her wrinkles were beautiful. All of that led to yearbook and journalism through middle school and high school, and eventually a career in graphic design and advertising. Along the way, I also discovered a love of interpreting Bible verses with art. I was very interested in getting the message of Christ’s love and care for us across visually. Fast forward many years after a challenging and exciting career in advertising as a graphic designer, I felt like my right brain was shriveling up, atrophying. So, with two toddlers at home and working as an art director full time, I decided to start painting, because I didn’t have a studio. I began with soft pastels, which were easy to get out and put away, full of glorious color and very forgiving. I wanted to throw color around for the joy of it, and I didn’t want to explain to anyone what I was doing or why. Note to anyone feeling they want to start doing something just for themselves, but they have to wait until the kids are grown or until you have time, start now. Start small, it adds up. Don’t wait along the way. I accidentally inherited Art Gallery. Tamelo Art Company is an artist collective that’s been going for almost 25 years now. God gave me a heart to hold space for artists. Artists deal with isolation. We need a community, and rarely get rich. Surprise, the gallery is a place of beauty, calm, and healing, both for the artists and those who come in to see the art. While there are unending categories and subjects and ways to make art, I happen to be driven to paint nature, particularly what I call nature’s chaos. There’s so much going on. The rocks on the bottom of stream bed call to me. The dense limbs of trees with sky holes and grasses beg to be painted. I’m an impatient painter, so this is somewhat counterintuitive, but I try to keep it loose. If you look at a Monet from a distance, the scene looks nearly realistic, but up close it’s a mass of wild marks and globs of paint. Since the beginning of time, humans have had the urge to describe and record the world with any tool at hand, filtering it onto rock, paper, canvas, clay, and the Bible is full of analogies based on God’s creation, ripe for visual interpretation. Light is foundational. Jesus said, ‘I’m the light of the world. To see at all, we need light. Light is color. The wavelengths of light landing on an object make color. I won’t go into the science of light and color, but it is fascinating, and for me almost hard to comprehend. An analogy of living water is another one that’s wonderful to paint. If any man is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me from his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water. We know that Jesus probably wasn’t talking about an actual stream or river, but rather the properties of water that are basic to life. But I think he also meant the marvel of water flowing, rushing its stillness and purity. To experience water is to be refreshed and renewed even in the high desert. Thankfully, we’re surrounded with water, and especially springs. He makes springs pour water into the ravines. It flows between the mountains. Where does that sound like? You shall be a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters. Do not fail, the Cascade Lakes, and in particular the Deschutes River, are created by mountain runoff that goes underground and bubbles up as springs, and eventually the river, our Deschutes River, is considered one of the most consistent spring-fed rivers in the United States, and of course, many rivers begin with springs, like the Metolious and the Mackenzie River, which are extraordinary, beautiful places. It is an incredible visual example of what God wants to do in each of us, refilling us with living water all along our route. And lastly, streams in the desert, my personal favorite. See, I am doing a new thing now. It springs up. Do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. This is what I love to paint. So, why does God care about art? It’s a mystery I’ve thought about a lot. Art may seem frivolous, not a necessity. It’s often the first to go from curriculums and budgets, yet studies tell us the arts are integral to learning. Art seems to open up people’s emotions. It’s as if funneling God’s creation through our human brains, eyes, and hands creates a whole new layer of beauty that just keeps going, as potentially both through the makers of art, seeing new creations happen under their hands, and the seers of art, who then let the image sift through their being, and so God’s creation is interpreted in endless ways, bringing healing to us and glory to God. The words that have really come forward to me while thinking about this subject are noticing and seeing deeply, this skill has sharpened through my years of making art, and my walk of faith. Discerning the still small voice of God, honoring God’s creation by filtering it through our being leads to humility, awe, calm, and peace. Making art has helped me to pay attention. Painting plein air, in particular, has taught me about noticing and seeing deeply. While painting plein air, the world slows down, the artist is only seeing, discovering, mixing paint as fast as we can, putting down marks in a short period, chasing the sun. The right brain takes hold, and intuition takes over. Background chatter fades away. Everything stands out at once, and the more you look, the more you see. You have to decide what to leave in and what to leave out. There’s no time to consider. You use your instincts, kind of like walking in faith, knowing that I’m co-creating with God, helps me manage the inherent emotional risks of creativity. As writer Elizabeth Gilbert describes in the artistic process in her TED talk about creativity, she talks about the crip, crippling self-doubt, the critic on your shoulder, the judgment we place on ourselves, along with a couple of stories about the spirit blowing through the land fiercely, looking for a creative that will receive the inspiration, even knocking them over with its immensity and almost brutal enthusiasm. The creative running to catch up if they weren’t paying attention, and they felt like they almost missed it. I believe this is the Holy Spirit, so full of purpose and creativity and message that it’s on fire. Faced with a blank canvas and a glimmer of an idea, I always feel unable, less than helpless, not knowing where to start. Simply going in my studio and beginning an artwork is one of the very hardest things I do. I have to show up and begin. I have to trust the spirit to come alongside, guide my intuition, connect eyes and hands to my right brain, which is in charge, this is the spirit to me, functioning outside of thought. When an artist enters that space, it’s the most wonderful feeling, but it doesn’t happen every time. Sometimes it’s the training and the rules that gets us through, but after you’ve learned and internalized those things, it’s pushing through the norm that lets us fly. Continuing is what’s most important in many ways. Doing a work of art is like a life of faith. We see through a glass darkly, we follow a feeling, a streak of color, a shape, a mark, but we don’t know the way. It’s step by step. We follow the thread, the initial idea never turns out the way we envisioned. Just as in life, we need to open, be open to what comes. Happy accidents, letting go, even knowing when to stop. Every painting has an arc. It’s working. I can do this. This is going to be great. It’s not working. It’s terrible. Why did I think I could do this? I’m burning this. I’ll ask someone to trust. I trust for advice. It’s getting there. It’s starting to work. I think it’s done. Like life, the only way is through. We have to keep going. Another mystery to me is the relationship between the artwork and the people who view it. I’ve seen people in the gallery gazing at artwork and begin to tear up. Art opens the doors of people’s emotions, pure feeling. They can’t explain it either. A couple of weeks ago, I was in the gallery, and a woman came in looking for a card, and I asked her something about the one she’d chosen. She said it was for a friend whose child had just commenced suicide, and added that she was struggling with what to write to her friend. The other gallerist artist there had lost a daughter-in-law to suicide recently, and so shared her wisdom. The moment ended with everyone crying and hugging all of this over a $6 card with artwork of a heart. The power of art is beyond words. Many medical institutions have embraced art and healing. Art of any kind, particularly of nature, is shown to bring down our heart rate, blood pressure, and cortisol levels, even inflammation. I keep asking God, why He puts up with humanity. Personally, I just don’t get it. I would have given up a long time ago. Humans have only been on earth for around 300,000 years. How exhausting is that for God, with all of our fighting, hate, grief, greed, wars, belly aching. One night recently, I was taking a walk and looking up at the stars, asking that question again, and I felt that still small voice in my heart say, I need humans to notice, see, absorb. absorb, be in awe of what I’ve made. The Supreme Artist wants his work to be seen and to heal us with the genius of his beauty. It’s love made visible in the same way, only a lot smaller. The art humans make needs to be seen. It needs an audience to truly become so. If you can’t draw a straight line, and I hear people say that so often, first off, that’s really good. Take time to see art and feel and hear what it is saying to you. Take in the calm and peace it brings. To be a noticer is a gift too. If you like to draw, get a sketchbook journal, a felt tip pen, and a little palette of watercolors, and paint whatever is in front of you, ordinary or sublime. If you can’t draw that well, but have an eye for design and texture, try pottery, or fabric art, or printmaking, or pick up pieces of junk metal to weld together, or flower ranging. The list goes on. If you don’t consider yourself an artist, surprise, you are either in the doing or the experience of art. However, you express yourself, color outside the lines and see what happens.
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