Black Stump 08 Artist Statement

Junior Art Group | Palmerston North Art Association | Massey Library | Teachers can paint too | Art Views | CVAN | NGH 2003 | CEGACT | St. James 2004 | NGH 2005 | Real Time | Missionheart | Digital Art Show | Denmark | Austalia Day | BANANA ONE | 2006 Easter Digital | Ladies Luncheon | 2006 Digital Beginnings | 2006 Black Stump | 2006 Art Views in the Hills | 2006 Landmarks | 2006 Wastelands | Banana Belconnen Markets | Affluence | Art Overboard Awards 2007 | Landmarks 2007 | Mellow Fruitfulness | Easter 2007 | Wasteland Travelling 2007 | Belgium | Recylcled /Wastelands | Disposable - Affluence | Caged | Art Overboard Awards 2008 | Forever After | Being Human | Natural Flair Then-where? | Black Stump 08 | C3Monash | Wild | Start | Government House Open Day | BeAN - Kubla Khan | Flairwear Caverns | Bean - Exotic | Government House 2010 | Show of Hands 2010 | Hellenic Club | St. James | Belconnen Ways | BeAN - If Music | Angels in our midst | St James Fun Day | St Margarets Easter | St Margarets 2013 -2014 | Peaceful Landscape | Kings 37th Annual Art Show | Lift Him Up

The lolly tree - Choice is Sweet

Limited edition giclee print on paper
610 x 910

While in Berrima I also saw a shop full of sweets, a profusion of colour organized and constrained in lines of jars. Many lollies in one jar. Many jars on one shelf. Many shelves in one shop. A multitude to satisfy desires beyond the basic needs. It amazed me. It sprang thoughts of how affluent we are - so many lollies to choose from. It reminded me of the church - a multicoloured treat.
I thought that being affluent meant having the wealth and resources that create a wider range of choices, having an abundance of choices and the freedom to choose. It was like a lolly tree with jars of lollies peeling off like bark.

I came across the following bible verse and I felt as though I was in that place:
"He enticed you from the narrow mouth of distress, into a broad place with no constraints - freedom; and spread out before you a table full of fatness, giving you an abundance of food to choose from." Job 36:16

Having an abundance of choices and a free will is not only like a river flowing freely but it is also like ribbons and leaves dangling in the wind.

The tree is shaped like a wine glass a symbol of affluence and a reminder that even our affluence comes from God. When we drink from the cup we remember Christ - the grape voice wining and warning. God’s word is sweeter than lollies. His word builds the tree of life in us and choosing to heed it paradoxically, gives us the greatest freedom. Choice is a sweet blessing


Silver Lining

Limited edition giclee print on paper
800 x 660

We lost most of our assets and because of this ended up in Canberra, a place that we never would have chosen to go to. We could only afford to buy a house that was half the size of our previous one and it was too small, but it had a Magnolia tree and I had planted one in every place we had lived in. However, this soon died in the Summer heat and the ceilings in the house began peeling. I had never seen peeling ceilings before. It was disappointing, but they looked so lovely curling down, just like the curling of the bark off the trees I passed every day. I loved being Canberra. I felt like Joseph, that God had used the difficulties to get us to a place where he wanted us and it turned out to be a place that I loved too…but I also had the Holy Spirit. He was the silver lining in every cloud. Just as the beauty of the peelings was the silver lining on the disappointment of my ceilings, so the Spirit of God is my permanent treasure no matter what earthly treasures I lost.

The redemptive pattern – pain for gain

Limited edition giclee print on paper
990 x 763

My father used to use his aeroplanes like we might use our car, so early on I was exposed to a very different perspective of the world! When I first saw the New Zealand mountains from above it looked like someone had sploshed whipped cream all over them. So this was the look I decided on when, in 2005 I began making an art work for my first digital competition which was themed Christmas. I thought I would use the Christmas colours of red white and green.

The program I used was a 3d software program called “Terragen” where I sculpted the mountains and made the valleys low enough for water. I added atmospheric conditions so that the sky became red and set the water to make it icy….I didn’t finish it in time for the competition so it sat there until the following year.

I was wanting to put some land in a cup and when I revisited this image in 2006, and looked at the snowy mountains it suddenly looked like a cool refreshing drink, a sherbet in a wine glass.....so I took it into Photoshop, where I used the mouse to draw a wine glass.

As I looked at the image I was making I thought: "Blood red from pure white". Colour on a monitor is different from pigment colour because it is based on light. If you mix the primary pigment colours you get a muddy brown, but if you mix the RGB colours, which are used when choosing colours for showing on a monitor, you get white….white light. White is made from the highest values of red, green and blue. I thought of all the kingdoms that had been paid for in blood and wondered how many people when thinking of a kingdom thought only of a circular crown and what can be held in the hand and not of all the roots/branches that come out from one….all the effects of being “King of the castle”! I thought of leaves and the seasons of kingdoms. Then I thought: “How like God’s kingdom this is.” So I took some of the clouds and turned them into flame wings to represent the Holy Spirit.”

So here I have a little piece of the land of mountains and snow and a little piece of the land of sky and fire…… Now that is like New Zealand, the land of my physical birth and Australia, which is the land of my spiritual birth…. Kiwi land you can own…hold in your hand but Aussie land you can only lease!

In 2007 I put the image onto a hand. Fingers make a pattern like sun rays so I placed them on the sun - the hands of the Son of God. His kingdom cools the angry heat of violence hurled towards us and is like a refreshing drink. I added another image I had created in Terragen manipulating it by blurring some of the cloud edges and emphasizing the rays to represent some of the tempest and added a pattern of nails like the boundary of a prison fence as another symbol for human violence. The separating curtain between God and people has been torn. God’s anger towards our sin has been appeased. A cup of suffering - the price for a cool refreshing kingdom

The trees of the field will clap their hands
Limited edition giclee print on paper
800 x 660

I took a photo of a beautiful red church door in Melbourne. It was a side door and shut tightly. I saw leaves at the National Art gallery in Canberra, that looked as though they were clapping their hands. In Photoshop, placed the door on a bed of rock and applied filters to a copy of the rocks to make the stylized and symbolic foundation rock bed. The church is built upon the rock and the trees of the field are waiting for the people to come out with joy. Then they will clap their hands too.

Crowned
Limited edition giclee print on paper

One of the ladies, who creates visual experiences for our special church events, asked me if I would make an art work for the following Easter display that she was making. She was thinking about using white flowers and fencing wood. I prayed about what image I should create and barbed wire with a white rose came into my mind. I thought about the crown Jesus accepted, a crown of suffering, of earthly boundaries, fencing in, of the perfect holy and beautiful Son of God whose flesh, like all flesh was able to be torn. The ‘Rose of Sharon” came into my mind and I decided to use a white rose to represent the perfection, beauty and sinless nature of Jesus. My husband had given me some new computer software for Christmas - Photoshop. I decided to try my image out on the computer to see what it would look like first. I was pleased with it, so I decided to have it printed onto canvas. I planned to paint over it, as I was running out of time, but it looked so good that I left it as a print. It was so well received that I decided to contribute one for the following Easter, and so I began sharing what God was saying through images again as I did when I first became a Christian.



 

 


© J. K. Phillips     Disclaimer
Current URL: