Why Art Matters
When images help provide comfort
Two weeks ago I was at my Synod Assembly. It’s when pastors and designated lay members of the congregation all get together with their Bishop and Synod staff to elect members to a Synod Council, make changes to the Synod Constitution, get updates on the state of the wider church body as a whole, etc.
During this year’s Synod Assembly I had the opportunity to display and sell both my book, “Once Upon a Nightmare” and some prints of my artwork.
The members of my church that had accompanied me to the Assembly also brought their two little girls. The eldest was six. She is a precocious child who a few weeks earlier had attended a speech I gave at our conference Women of the ELCA (WELCA) gathering and was looking at some of my art then and was able to connect that three of my pieces were related and told a story: “Puppet Master,” “Down the Rabbit Hole,” and “Games With No Rules.” She picked out the common elements and was like, “hey, the jester in this painting is wearing some of the same patterns as the cheshire cat in this painting…”
She was picking up on the ways in which I had been depicting two different narcissists that had wreaked havoc in my life.
Anyway…during that Synod Assembly she sat next to me at my table with my art prints and book and she pointed at the print for this painting and asked what it meant.
I told her that it was a painting titled “In God’s Hands,” meaning that no matter what we go through in life, we are in the hands of a loving God who not only shaped us, but continues to care for us—both now in this life, and in the next one.
I honestly didn’t think much about the moment. Was just me explaining my painting.
Yesterday, I got a call from that little girl’s mother. The little girl’s grandmother was dying and I offered to come over and say some prayers and do a commendation of the dying for them. The mother said she just didn’t know how to explain what was happening to her two young daughters. They just were too young to really contemplate it.
This morning I received a text message after inquiring how the grandmother was doing about that little girl. The text read:
“Wow! [My daughter] blows my mind with how strong her faith is and how she’s handling this. She starts telling me that she’s going to miss Yia Yia [their name for grandma] when she dies, but she’s in good hands. She smiles and said when God takes her in his hands, she will be safe. She’s in good hands! I asked if she was talking about your painting and she said, ‘Yes! She will be with God!’” And then said she remembered what I had told her about this painting.
When I say the moment brought tears to my eyes, I’m saying it literally brought tears to my eyes. Art is of course meant to touch people’s souls, so I’m not sure why I’m surprised every time one of my paintings actually does that. But it does.
That a piece of artwork I created helped a six year old understand and feel comforted by the impending loss of her grandmother was not something I ever anticipated, but also reminds us how important art is in our lives. How the imagery of art can help convey deep truths and emotions that we are otherwise unable to grasp at times on our own or with words. How her young mind was able to take a painting I had explained the meaning of a few weeks earlier and apply it to her own life in that way left me speechless.
It’s a lesson on two fronts:
Kids always understand more than we give them credit for.
Art is important in teaching concepts—even concepts as deep and difficult as death.
“Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”