Art As Prayer

This began as a comment on Nina West’s Facebook Page when she brought up this subject.   

I agree with you Nina. We can make our painting, drawing or sculpture into a prayer by offering our hands as a channel for God to use. 

After all don’t we imitate God by our little act of creation?  Is it not an offering of our self ? As you say, so many prayers are petitions that look for something…. and nothing is more human. 

But to try to channel what may be Gods desire by being present to what that may be… through the art we make? Surely this is a noble aspiration?

This is at the heart of what prayer is… To Listen.  I was always taught that being able to make art was a gift from God to begin with. It’s seems to make perfect sense that we might offer it to be put to use in this way. Perhaps we might even reflect something of Gods Love back into the world. Especially in a world that so obviously needs it.  Who knows, perhaps art made with this pure intention might serve as a channel of grace? 

I feel there are certain artists that have done this.  Rembrandt , Raphael, the PRB’s some Surrealists, some classical Greek art , Chinese painters also …. who have managed to retain this quality which opens a window into The Real World allowing a viewer to glimpse something that goes beyond this shadow world. It allows them to see beyond the everyday and lift us out of our daily chores even if only for a moment. 

And what a Moment , an eternal moment, when we see “La Belle Dame Sans Merci“ a favorite subject painted by the PRB’s (based on a Keats Poem)  where a beautiful maiden leans closer to the knight wearing his armour, whom he has placed on his horse and he becomes completely disarmed by her unable to defend himself from her call of love. 

Extract from Ballad by Keats….

 I met a lady in the meads,

       “Full beautiful—a faery’s child,

Her hair was long, her foot was light,

       And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,

       And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;

She looked at me as she did love,

       And made sweet moan” 

See the rest of the poem here 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44475/la-belle-dame-sans-merci-a-ballad

Then see the images here 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Belle_Dame_sans_Merci#

The Frank Dicksee and John William Waterhouse painted versions…. are the ones that appeal  to me.  And they do depict a moment when one is completely taken over by love, an idea of love,  a sort of love you might give up everything for. An otherworldly love that makes you want to stay forever in that world and yet suffer the pain of being pulled away from such a love to realise it was a dream of such completeness and perfection. And how such a painting  can make you feel that in  a perfect frozen moment. 

Witnessing a painting like this in the gallery may stay with you all your life. And when you have such dreams of otherworldly possibilities you may always remember its scene and how it caught the feeling of pain that comes with having to leave that perfect intensity of love found and come back to our drab shadow world.

Truly this is love without mercy. A type of consuming vision that we beg never to have to leave.  Caught in passionate colours of redness and entangled in branches that reach out to grow around us as we realise how completely we long ourselves for such a love, need such a love. The painting by Frank Dicksee on the subject shows the knight having placed the maiden on his horse with his arms outstretched as she leans down as if to kiss him. The experience appears mystical , he is enraptured .  Even the horse is in complete obeisance to it.  Her beauty , fairness of skin is palpable. Keats and the painters who illustrated this ballad  surely saw something that goes way beyond mere mortal experience and they captured it here and our gaze drank it in . Once seen it cannot be unseen. 

It’s works such as these that allow us to hope , to dream, we may capture such a vision, one that pulls the spectator into that otherworldly awareness and perhaps makes them think in a moment, when they have almost lost faith in it, that such a thing may still exist and may even still be waiting for us.  

Did the artist succeed in helping us to believe in Love , a perfect idea of it? Perhaps this image does not capture this for you but other images do. They are reminders that our world is not limited by the chains of destruction that seem to wrap around life where the very idea of love is under such extreme imprisonment .  A place where humanity has almost forgotten what the suffering of those trapped in conflict and struggle is like. If we were to listen to the news media it appears that they would have you believe that the battle is lost , we are completely surrounded by despair and pointless pain.

Even in such a world could an artist be employed by God to create visions that remind us that She exists? Perhaps Dicksee and Waterhouse truly succeeded in painting their visions of this scene .  Perhaps She is the maiden, perhaps it is God in Her feminine form in these paintings who is yearning to be loved looking for a saviour to love them and protect them?    Maybe this painting we see encapsulates the most Perfect Prayer of all, the Prayer of our God calling us to love God ? 

See short essay on Rembrandt in relation to this subject. 

https://perfectvisionguild.blogspot.com/2022/07/the-goodness-of-rembrandt-on-observing.html