Being a painter is a lot like being a human being. Time after time, I approach a blank canvas with a preformed notion of how the painting is going to play out. From the beginning of the piece, I have this imagined end in mind, a completed painting that is daring and masterful- so I go about trying to control the process, directing the work towards this imagined end, totally unprepared for all the problem-solving inherent to the act of painting and intolerant of all those genius accidents/mistakes that ultimately make a painting successful. The painting is underway and I default into a total control freak. In reality, I have no better chance of steering the painting where I want it to go than I have of throwing a saddle on a grizzly bear and telling it to canter. It reminds me of Steve Buscemi’s character in Armageddon, riding the nuclear warhead- some things (most things) are simply too big for us to handle on our own.Read more

I can’t really say that heavy metal is my favorite genre of music, although I did enjoy a brief Metallica kick in high school and I do rely on DragonForce to keep me awake during late night painting sessions. That said, I want to describe a recent, and unexpectedly AWESOME heavy metal experience.

 The other night my musician friend Mitch, from Philadelphia, drove down to Charlottesville for a last minute gig at a local bar/music venue. Mitch plays bass in the heavy metal trio Haley, named after the lead singer/growler. Their album cover shows the leather-clad, eye-linered, tattooed band members posed together wearing purposefully blank expressions. The track list on the back reads as follows: 1)Burning Witches 2)Blacked Out 3)Hallowed 4)Devour 5)Stop This Ride 6)Pain is Love 7)Leeches 8)Apathy 9)Broken Guitars 10)Drown Me. My favorite is the CD design, which boasts an x-ray hand giving the middle finger.Read more

In the five minutes that it would otherwise take you to read a full post, do yourself a favor and watch this video.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=2539741

This struck me as a pretty vivid portrait of the Kingdom. Don’t you know this will be going on in the New Heavens and the New Earth! Read more

Our greatest desire is to be fully known and fully accepted.  Deep down we want someone to see us for who we are- the beautiful with the ugly- and neither balk in disgust nor mistake us for something we are not, something better with fewer blemishes and flaws.  And yet, we fear the fulfillment of the very thing we desire.  Our greatest fear is to be known, found out, rejected.  Out of this fear we build up defenses like walls, hiding our weakness, preventing anyone from really knowing us at all.  We are like shopkeepers that put mannequins in the window, clean projections of the person we would rather people see (confident, attractive, sociable, interesting, etc), all the while keeping the shop door locked tight, carefully keeping the ugly reality of our imperfect lives out of sight.

As a portrait artist, the goal of my paintings is to subvert this practice of building defenses, and instead create a conversation with the viewer that is open and honest. You look at the person on the canvas and they look right back at you. Hopefully there is intimacy in that moment of examination.  Maybe it is because the person in the canvas never looks away.  You can look and look, critiquing every wrinkle and zit, but the subject has no shame.

Tommy Parker lived on the streets of Charlottesville for 18 years. You could always count on seeing him on the corner by the university, asking for change from students walking briskly by. He was in his early sixties, but hard drinking and homelessness seemed to have worn another ten years into his face. Married in his twenties, he was long since estranged from his wife and daughter. About five years ago, a car hit Tommy at night and broke both his legs. Last spring he was hit again, and walked with a painful limp after. For a man as beaten and broken as Tommy, he had a surprising joy, always thanking “Jesus and God” he was alive.

Tommy died of a heart attack early morning October 27. He lived in a fallen world, a world that God is at work restoring and making new. While God's redemptive work in this world is visible, it is not complete, and not all the broken pieces get fixed, as evidenced by Tommy’s body and mind.

And yet, Tommy’s passing was not purely tragic. The Sunday before his death, he attended the morning service at St. Thomas’ church, received Communion and prayed with the pastor. The same brother who took Tommy to church gave him money for a hotel room. After nearly two decades of sleeping in doorways and on benches, Tommy died under a roof in a king-sized bed.
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I was pretty hesitant to read The Shack by William P. Young.  It sits in every airport mini-bookstore on the bestseller shelf, displayed loudly, right next to the most recent Joel Osteen self help manual.  Copies are literally flying off the shelves, as more than a million copies have been sold since last May.  Everyone and their dog have read it.  The book gets tossed around in Christian circles more than any book since Blue Like Jazz.   

With a book this popular and this widely acclaimed I could not help but think to myself, “This has got to be junk.”  When I finally sat down to read it, my expectations were low.  I anticipated a bunch of watered down, easy to swallow bologna that might explain why so many people are buzzing about it.  Maybe you can sympathize with my skepticism.  It seems like there is an endless supply of bad “Christian” reading these days.  We live in a world where the Gospel is consistently skewed, warped, and watered down, where people can hardly count on hearing sound teaching in their churches on Sunday mornings.  Why should I expect a national bestseller like The Shack to be any different?

I stand corrected.     Read more

I was in Budapest with two friends, about halfway through our two week post-graduation Eastern Europe jamboree. We were arguing, over some coffee, about the schedule for the afternoon. I was really frustrated and felt left out of the conversation. Not only did I feel annoyed and slighted, but I was also hot, sore, and hungry. To add to my already sour mood, our server at the café was a jerk. Before I could hand him the money for our bill, he snatched it from my fingers impatiently and stomped off. None of this sounds particularly earth-rattling, but nevertheless, I was fuming. The sum of it all- the heat, the hunger, the aches, the arguing, the pushy server- had steam coming out my ears.

There was a church we wanted to see right across the street, so we left the café and walked over. I was seething when I walked up, but something happened inside. As soon as we entered through the doorway and under the vaulted ceiling, a group of nondescript tourists with fanny packs and cameras assembled at the front of the church and broke into song. They sang a Hungarian hymn, and as their voices rose and fell and swelled again for a final “Amen,” I found myself weeping in one of the pews. As quickly as they had assembled, the group dispersed and exited the church. Read more

As a college student, I still get to worry about really trivial life decisions. Should Taco Bell’s recommended “Fourth Meal” be a staple in my overall dietary habits? Can I pull off wearing the same pair of underwear one more day? These are things I get to worry about. As a senior in college, however, some of those less trivial life decisions have begun to present themselves. I have to think about where I am going to be next year, what I might be doing in that place, and how I am going to eat without a fraternity meal plan. In short, I have no earthly idea how to answer any of these questions, and believe me- I get plenty of opportunities to try. It is all anyone asks you as a second semester senior.

Lately, I feel utterly confused, anxious, frustrated, and lost. I sense an air of expectation around me that may or may not actually be there, but whose presence (or imaginary presence) closes around me like that foam/slime stuff they use to fix puncture holes in tires. People tell me that I don’t need to have my life planned out at this very moment, and I really do believe them- but it is so hard to rest in that when every other social and cultural force says the exact opposite. Read more

     Before I left school to come home for Christmas break, I shipped an oversized suitcase on a Greyhound bus.  That suitcase disappeared, along with all the stuff inside.  Throughout the holidays and into the next semester, I have prided myself on how well I have survived without all my lost stuff.  I am really resourceful.  I am like Tom Hanks in Castaway, using an ice skate for knife, axe, and dental hygienic tool. 

    That is, until Blue Ridge Mountain Sports announced the coming of their annual “Avalanche” sale.  Every stinking thing in the store was 50% off, which was way too enticing for a gear-head like myself.  In hindsight, I can acknowledge the absurdity of my mission.  At the time, however, there wasn’t even a moment of hesitation.  I actually set my alarm clock two hours earlier than normal so that I could get to the store right at opening. Over the next hour and a half, I pinballed around the clothing displays, hemorrhaging money that could have been much better spent toward furthering the Kingdom or at least paying off overdue parking violations.  Read more

Christmas is nearly upon us and hordes of relatives are caravanning down the highways in cars packed with re-gifted sweaters and reindeer headbands. As I consider my own kin, a list of titles and labels stream through my mind. I have the uncle who sends terrible chain emails to the whole family, the cousin that demands Freebird at every family wedding, the cousin who looks like Forest Gump, and his daughter that was born a deep shade of orange. I can literally rattle off an alias for everyone in the family.

As a college student I am pretty quick to divvy out titles to the people around campus as well. Boom-box Guy, Unicycle Girl, The Late Night Runner, David the Sudanese Refugee, Tommy the Homeless guy- I label all of them, compartmentalizing their identities into neat mental boxes. Unicycle Girl is the girl who unicycles to class, end of story. David the Sudanese Refugee is the Sudanese refugee. He also has a name, the end. This system of titles and labels may help me describe these individuals to another person, but ultimately, it robs the individual of their humanity. Unicycle Girl is no longer a real person. She is a cartoon, a caricature with certain qualities grossly inflated and others entirely discarded. My title for her neglects the breadth of her personality and spirit, stripping her of any dignity. Do I know anything about her? No, not at all. Read more