Working On a New Online Class

I’m so excited to share that I am currently hard at work on my third online class - a class dedicated to the idea of combining poetry (both the reading and the writing) with painting.

This has long been a subject near and dear to my heart. (On my Instagram, check out the hashtag #poetryandpaintinggotogether ).

Why have I felt so full of this topic, combining poetry with painting, for so long? Mostly, because a full 1/3 of the Bible was written as poetry. This tells me that not only is God the original artist…He is also the original poet. In fact, He may have been a poet before He was artist - at least where it concerns you and me. Because before there was anything - there was His word.

Then, there is the fact that the largest, longest book in Scripture, the book of Psalms, was written by a man who many politely call a “warrior-poet”. King David, the man after God’s own heart. Well. Pardon me please, but I can’t think of a better description of David, other than “the man after God’s own heart”, than “badass poet”.

Last but not least, I have been overjoyed to discover that…y’all….poets walk among us! They look like your daughter or your pastor or your neighbor - but, deep inside, many are also “Bad Ass Poets”. They pick up poetry as a weapon to force big emotions to surrender. They bring those big emotions, with their words, into a space where those otherwise overwhelming feelings are made subservient to the poet’s passion for God.

I will be sure to come back and let you know both how things are progressing and when the class launches. I will be launching it inside the creative network of my one of my dearest friends Jeanne Oliver’s creative network. In the meantime, I covet your prayers, because this is hard work. I write, film, do all the art, and then edit and upload everything for each and every class. I have no help at this time. The workflow is enormous. (I’ve been in preliminary discussions with a video production company. I dream of using Sherwood Media someday, when I am ready to launch classes on this website. Check them out!)

New Abstract Art In The Shop

This is the largest abstract painting I’ve completed to date. It was inspired by the poem by Robert Frost called “Nothing Gold Can Stay”.

Nature's first green is gold, 

Her hardest hue to hold. 

Her early leaf's a flower; 

But only so an hour. 

Then leaf subsides to leaf. 

So Eden sank to grief, 

So dawn goes down to day, 

Nothing gold can stay.

My interpretation of the poem is different from most. Here in East Tennessee, spring is days away. March 1st marks the first day of meteorological spring, and March 21st is the official start of the season.

The color of the earliest leaves of spring! It’s a delicate, incandescent green, and when the sun hits it just right, it can even take on a golden yellow hue.

That very, very first spring green is unlike any other! It is as rare as gold - as hard to come by as earth’s most valuable metal. Truly, gold is nature’s - and people’s - hardest “hue” to hold, literally and figuratively. Riches do sprout wings and fly away. Spring golden-green grows deeper and different by the day. It disappears.

As bittersweet as they are, I see in these words a celebration of sorts. There is no celebration without appreciation, and there is no appreciation without a clear sense that the most beautiful things are also the most rare and transient.

Here is where my interpretation of the poem differs from most: “Eden sank to grief”, that’s true. Yet I know for sure that Eden will be restored. Eternity stretches forward far more than an hour. Today at age 52, and then at 62 and 82, I will have no less days ahead of me than when I first began.

All that matters most to you and I will, because of the grace of God, always be ours to have and to hold.

Nothing gold can stay. But it also can’t stay gone forever.

This piece is available here