I really thought this interview by the folks at
Veritas Press with John Taft, a Christian painter who painted their most recent cover had some great thoughts. What do you think about the correlation between the arts and Christianity and serving God through creative outlets?
On a side note, I also found his thoughts on abstract art to be interesting.
********************************************
"Beauty is one way God loves his people": An Interview with John TaftJohn Taft is the artist who painted the picture featured on the cover of the Veritas Press catalog. A successful computer graphics designer, animator, and art director in the television industry for 18 years, Taft decided to pursue painting full time. He, his wife, and his four children moved from New York City to the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, where he has become an award-winning landscape artist. Here is part of our conversation.
Why do you paint?The last couple years in television, as I did a two-and-a-half or three-hour round-trip commute into New York from New Jersey to work my long days, I would get up and paint on location for a couple hours either Saturday or early Sunday morning. This was my commitment to moving in the direction I felt I should be going.
One morning, as I painted a local park a few miles from the Hudson River, I stood before an inlet pond. Behind me about 20 feet was an overpass with traffic; below my vision, at my feet, was floating all sorts of garbage-plastic bottles, a basketball, etc. Across the water, through the trees, I could see glimpses of semis on the interstate heading toward New York. I asked myself, what could I see in this place to paint?
I began to key in on the trees and their reflection in the water, and as I worked, the light began to shift, and a sense of beauty came upon my senses. It was a very unusual experience. I had to stop painting because I did not want to look away. A few birds flew across the pond, and I saw the light off their wings as in slow motion. Beauty. I got a subjective realization, consistent with Scripture, that beauty is one way God loves his people-one way he ministers to people in our hectic lives. That is why I paint. I am part of that.
What made you leave a successful career for the risky business of being a full-time artist?I cannot speak of leaving my previous career to become an artist without mentioning a sense of being "called," and that did not come without a realization that my initial call to Christ was something he did, not me. My default thinking of my upbringing was that my work is all going to burn, and that all that would remain would be how many I could help bring to Christ. I knew God had gifted me in the arts in particular, and I have always seen his direction in my life, but I had problems squaring being an artist and being a Christian. I feared taking that direction would be a selfish move, and it almost scared me to go there.
I became a Calvinist in my 30's, and almost instantly, I saw for the first time that Christ died for ME; he did not die to give me an option to choose or not choose him. Suddenly everything fell into place. If being elect meant Christ died to make the elect his own, then he saved me for a reason, and once that thought crossed my mind, it made sense that he had a real purpose for me, a calling (or many callings, actually). All honest work can be done for the Glory of God, verses the glory of the individual.
My wife and I took a vacation to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in 2001. I had dreamed of taking a landscape painting workshop in a beautiful place. It was just the thing to do for a break from the 50 - 60 hour work weeks in Manhattan. My wife, Lisa, had picked up a copy of Douglas Wilson's Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning, so she was reading that, and I was painting grandeur ,and we were praying for God's direction in our lives.
We were both surprised how we both, for the first time in our lives, felt we were being called, not just led, but called to our future work. It was on that trip that we decided (she convinced me) that she would homeschool our growing family (we have four children), and I would work toward someday making the break to being an artist.
As a Christian artist, why do you paint mountains and other scenes from nature?I think Psalm 19:1 says it well, "The heavens declare the glory of God." They are his handiwork, and witness to the Creator. For me it is a glory to be able to apply myself to painting this subject in all its variety and beauty. I now live within sight of the Rocky Mountains, so painting mountains is quite natural. I love to do a quiet little painting, but the majesty of mountains is often undeniable.
Additionally, observing the ever-changing light on the landscape is a feast for the eyes and a subject of study for the mind. That all makes translating such a subject to canvas and paint quite an interesting activity. Sometimes I feel like the colors and brush strokes, and the relationships of them to the whole and individually, is like orchestrating music. That is the realm where the "art" begins to come in. It is quite abstract... like music.
So landscape, considered artistically, is a matter of forms and colors and brush strokes, so that "It is quite abstract. . . like music." That ties to something I heard from Makoto Fujimura defending abstract art from Christians who insist that art always has to be realistic. Yet you work in the realistic mode. What are your thoughts about realism vs. abstraction in art?
Ironically, it is in seeing reality that I see the abstract, or connect to a quality of appreciation of color, of form, of shape, of contrast, that resonates with me and feels parallel to music on some level. God does reveal himself in His creation. I think of pure landscape painting as orchestrated music. That really is what I aspire to, and I believe that glorifies God.
I think of painting in general, no matter the subject, as a marriage of the representational and the abstract. When you think about it, on a real level, representational art IS abstract. It is bits of pigment on a flat surface.
Still, I can appreciate good abstract art, like Mako's. (He is my friend and an elder of the Village Church in New York. When we moved to Colorado, he gave me a copy of your book, Painters of Faith!) His work speaks to me because it is beautiful, sincere, and thoughtful. Mako, due to the path he has taken over the years, has the understanding and vocabulary to speak to many in his field. In general today, I think one is FREE to paint either abstractly or representationally.
God is the great designer, and I am drawn to painting the landscape which He designed and created through our savior, Jesus Christ. I do this while considering lessons learned from art of the past. As an artist with the ability to paint representationally, I have the option to paint any way I want. If I had the training in many universities over the past couple generations, my choices would be limited, because those skills have not been really taught.
What can you tell us about the painting on the cover of the catalog?Doing the catalog cover was a combination of both my wife's and my callings-hers to homeschooling; mine, to painting; and both because of a Reformed perspective of our faith, much of which has been encouraged over the years through Veritas Press!
