The term “Christian art” for me, and I expect for many others, raises memories of walking into the Christian bookstore and seeing canvas prints of second commandment violations or paintings of cottages overlaid with the text of Jeremiah 29:11. Being a Christian who is an artist, however, is not necessarily about making art that has market appeal for churchgoers.

At its core, the question of what it means to be a Christian artist isn’t much different than the question of how faith intersects with any vocation. How can I be salt and light to those I encounter in my work? What does it mean for my work, in its particularities, to glorify God and bring honor to Him? How does my redemption in Christ affect the work I produce?

The contemporary art world often feels spiritually dark and far from God, but I think this reflects the larger state of our culture. Art doesn’t happen in a vacuum; it responds to and reflects what happens in the world, and it reveals the hearts of its creators. Art is a means of communication that both reflects and influences culture, so Christians engaged in the arts have a unique opportunity to represent Christ to our culture by creating work with meaning, substance, truth, and beauty.

Though I strive for truth and beauty in my work, I do it very imperfectly. Here are some of the concepts that have helped me come to a growing understanding of what it means to be a contemporary artist in a culture that seems increasingly dark and directionless. Through God’s grace and continual help, I pray to continue learning and growing in this.

Beauty and Hope

Art reflects culture. This is one of the reasons art is so important; by viewing a culture’s artwork, we can see reflections of that culture’s assumptions, fears, priorities, and longings. We can see their beliefs. As our culture moves further away from biblical values, so does our artwork. The frequent absence of beauty in modern and contemporary art is one of the most striking evidences of this transition.

Artist Makoto Fujimura writes about this idea extensively in his book Culture Care. He argues that instead of fighting against culture, we as Christians can help care for it by positively adding to it (Inter-Varsity Press, 2017). By offering works of beauty and meaning in a culture that often feels devoid of those things, we can bring attention to Christ and the hope we have in Him.

One of the concepts that motivates me the most as a Christian artist is the idea that the existence of beauty points to the glory of the Creator. By creating artwork that reflects the beauty of creation—whether representational or abstract, three-dimensional or two-dimensional, objective or nonobjective—we can glorify the Creator and draw attention to the inherent value of that which reflects His goodness. As James writes, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (Jas. 1:17). Beauty is good, and something truly good can only come from God.

Beauty is valuable in and of itself, but it is also valuable as a means to point us toward hope. In his book Art for God’s Sake, theologian Philip Ryken writes, “In a world that has been uglified by sin, the Christian artist shows the plausibility of redemption by producing good work that is true in its beauty” (P&R Publishing, 2006, p. 45). The continued evidence of God’s beauty and goodness in this world points to its future redemption through the work of Christ and gives us cause for hope in the midst of brokenness and suffering.

Making beautiful artwork does not mean ignoring the brokenness of the world or glossing over sin and suffering. Art is often used to draw attention to wrongs in society in order to change them. The difference is whether the work stops at depicting brokenness or if it gives an indication that there is a solution to brokenness.

I try to represent both brokenness and beauty in my work through depicting the contemporary landscape. When we pay attention to the created world around us, we see the inherent beauty and gracefulness of nature, as well as the precision and resourcefulness of humanity through the architecture and other human construction that interacts with nature.

However, we also see evidence of ugliness, decay, and fallen stewardship in these same environments: abandoned and overgrown buildings with the walls rotted through, deep cracks and potholes in asphalt roads, trash cans placed awkwardly in the middle of groves of trees.

My intention in my work is to depict these environments in a straightforward and somewhat objective manner, in order to allow the viewer to experience the subtle complexity of the interaction between humanity and the environment. We live in a deeply sinful and fallen world, the marks of which are evidenced in nature. But what God has created is beautiful and good, and the marks of this, too, are still very much present and lead us to worship the Creator.

There are many ways the fruit of the gospel can be evidenced through artwork, both obvious and subtle. The very existence of beauty and hope in the midst of sin and decay speaks to the power of Christ and can set the work of the Christian artist apart from those who see the world without hope for redemption.

Paying Attention

Another way that I see artwork as a means to glorify God is in the creation process. I am going to focus specifically on drawing because it is what makes up the majority of my own artistic practice, but many of these principles are true for artists in other media.

The act of drawing is cognitive as much as it is physical. One of the most important things I was taught in my freshman drawing class was to “draw what you see, not what you know.” Learning how to draw is learning how to see things as they really are, not as we think they are, and to represent them accurately. We need to pay deep attention to what we are drawing in order to draw it well.

This means the act of drawing requires critical thought and effort. Artist and researcher Gemma Anderson, whose work explores the connection between science and drawing through morphology, writes in her book Drawing as a Way of Knowing in Art and Science, “Drawing brings a deep sense of embodiment and connection to our experience of the world, providing a space to hold and to unfold complexity. There are continuous changes: pausing to observe, choosing direction, changing tempo, transitioning between focused and wider attention, inside and outside the line, of selecting what to take forward and what to let go” (Intellect, 2019, p. 22). Drawing, even when recreating something right in front of us, requires constant attention and forces us to experience our surroundings more fully and more accurately.

Drawing is a way of thinking. In her book The Primacy of Drawing, drawing scholar Deanna Petherbridge writes, “Drawing needs to be reaffirmed as intelligent practice, which is as much about thinking, seeing and interrogating as inventing, and which communicates as intensely with others as it refers to the affective self” (Yale University Press, 2010, p. 432). It is an act of communication, both with oneself and with others.

I can attest to these ideas in my own practice. Drawing makes me pay attention to that which is outside of myself. It gives me renewed sight for the things that are constantly around me, and I find that I understand the appearance, function, and structure of things better after I have drawn them. I start to both see and appreciate their uniqueness and nuances. The act of paying attention to something long enough to learn how to recreate it on paper can be a way to glorify God by noticing the many intricacies of His world.

Scripture is full of instances in which the things that God has created show His attributes, such as in Psalm 19💯 “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.” When we pay deep attention to the things that God has made, we pay deeper attention to Him and can come to a greater understanding and appreciation of His work, His goodness, and His majesty.