Most beautiful woman in the world

A year ago Monday, Shakespeare's birthday, I proposed to Jami and she said yes. A fateful day for both of us. Every day, the happiness of sharing life with her, rushes through my soul, like a spring gust through the trees.

Two paintings that are now different than a month ago

Talk about bleached out. Above is a madonna that I'm now repainting. The face will be the same, but the child, the pose, the weight, the color of the compostion are being radically reworked. I'm a mad scientist. Actually I was unhappy with the results, and though Jami loved this painting the way it was, I felt uneasy. I needed to change it. I liked the face as well, so I tried to save it. Soon I'll post my re-working.
Further above, at the top of this entry, is a view of my studio. The painting with the standing dark figure on a yellow disk is now entirely different. Now it is a single figure in profile that fills up the canvas - in a Hippolyte Flandrin kind of way, flanked by flowers, stars, a kitten and a bunny. It may now be the most ridiculous thing I've painted.

My Sherman story

The Story of how my great great grandfather met Wm T. Sherman

One hundred and forty years ago, Sherman, the former 1^st president of LSU, was incinerating his way across the green northern reaches of the Altahmaha watershed, when his western southern Union army came upon my great-great grandfather's, William Augustus's farm. As the Union soldiers coursed through the surrounding woods searching for livestock, provender and victuals, they confiscated William Augustus's masonic apron When Sherman saw the apron he vigorously sought its owner, my great-great grandfather, William Augustus.

Sherman came to William Augustus's in the darkest moment of the night. When he had awakened and came to the door, Sherman greeted him saying, “in travel the coarsest shoe leather is smoothed.” To which William Augustus responded, “and in travel the thickest soul is punctured.” William Augustus continued, “how is is you know so much about shoes?”Sherman laughed, slapping his thigh, and, pulling out the apron from a leather saddle bag, said, “I found this that was yours.” And so it transpired that my great-great grandfather and Sherman spent the night, coupled in conversation and arcane intercourse.

At dawn Sherman took him to the Union camp and displayed for him all that the grand army had gathered from civilization: concubines labored over great cauldrons of meat and vegetables; the air was thick with garlic and the music of saltimbaques, gypsies, and native Cherokee. Everywhere William Augustus saw fire and smoke, light and sound: the accompaniments of invention. Yet he kept a stoic wonderment as the grand general, his friend, led him through the vast union encampment to his head-quarter's tent.

Immediately the sons and daughters of the great Mississippi plantations took their coats and shoes and gave them slippers and robes. Then, as they were seated on camp stools, the South's Saladin paraded before William Augustus specimens of ancient animals, frozen in stone; ancient documents; gold from Ophir and gems; and wonderful machines: devices that projected moving pictures, reproduced music and speeches, and displayed the nature of the soul.

William Augustus spent the day enjoying the company of Sherman and his military savants. As evening came William Augustus was escorted back to his humble farm house. Sherman hugged him and blessed him. From that moment on a gnostic heritage has passed through the family: a great richness cloaked in poverty. This light in August resides in our wise blood.

I listened to my great grandmother tell this story to me and I was dubious. She took me to the edge of our farm where the soldiers camped, where the old road ran before it was paved. “This is where the soldiers camped” she motioned, “where the road bent towards the creek. Then there were not so many trees. When I was a girl we were still finding bits of burnt wood and leather, an old coin, a metal fragment of a jeweled fibula.”

But by my time the smells of horse and gun powder had washed away in a century of rain. The masonic apron had also disappeared. And all that might have remained was either a cuneiform bill of lading for a long lost cargo or more probably a ceramic ostracon burned by time.

I probably already have posted this

I've probably already posted this. But I'm posting it again for no good reason. I haven't posted anything in over a week. Where does time go? I've spent some time in my studio. I'm repainting a Madonna that I had painted earlier - and as Jami asserts, "there was nothing wrong with it." So I plan on posting the old and new versions as soon as I get it repainted. As an artist I find it helps to have a bit of the mad scientist approach in my painting. At some point I have to do things to a perfectly good painting - in order to make it better Or in order to conquer the elements.
People ask me: What does this painting mean? "Well," I think, "what do you want it to mean? What could such an occurrence as God becoming incarnate Other than as a man say about the person of God? What would the prospect of God pregnant and being crucified have for an understanding of atonement?" Sure, it happened the way it happened - but I think meaning can be enhanced by conceiving of alternate modes of incarnate life.

Out of Chaos

Two Summers ago I stretched a canvas that was about 4 by 5 feet and had it set up in my dorm room at the seminary. I began my typical searching out method to see what would emerge on this canvas, but I was dissatisfied: the room was too small to get anywhere on such a large field. I prayed, "Lord, I need a big room." And I thought that I might be able to find a spare room on campus that someone would let me use for a short time.
At this time I was preparing for and taking my ordination exams. During this time Katrina hit New Orleans. That such a disaster could hit a modern city and that the national and state response could be so tentative, faltering and lax, astonished me as well as others at the seminary. Brian Wren, the professor of worship, was planning a week of chapel services devoted to this disaster and he came to me, wondering if I had any artistic conceptions that could be incorporated. In the past I had done visual representations on dry erase board of a text. This time I realized that I had the perfect sized field for representation: the canvas I'd stretched in my room.
I brought the campus to the chapel and set it up, engineering it to a dry-erase board with lots of tape and twine. Over the course of the week's chapel service I painted a large abstract canvas, which resulted in the image posted above. I would come into the chapel at odd hours and work on it, so that it would be constantly changing. What people had seen was being constantly submerged under new layers of paint.
When I had finished the painting hung in the chapel of a month or more. For most of the the year it was displayed at the seminary bookstore. Eventually it was bought by a classmate of mine and now is displayed on a wall in her house.

Signs of the Times

I preached at a church just off the Parkway a week ago. When we got to the hotel there was this sign "welcome mr and mrs wise." Jami said, "shouldn't that read mr and dr wise? or better 'dr and mr wise?'"