People ask me what Christian modern art actually is. Here is the answer I would give standing in the studio, as plainly as I can put it.
The short definition
Christian modern art is art made in a modern visual language, abstraction, color, light and form, that takes its subject from the Christian faith. The faith is in the source, not on the surface. There is no lettering and no illustration of a scene. It is a painting first, and it is Scripture all the way down.
What it is not, and no criticism meant
There is beautiful lettered Scripture in the world, made by people with a gift I do not have. There are narrative religious paintings I have stood in front of for a long time and been grateful for. This is neither of those, and saying so is not a judgment on either.
A lettered verse hands you the words. A narrative painting shows you the event. What I am reaching for is a third thing: what a verse does to a person who has been living with it.
Why abstract, and why color
Because that is what a verse is like from the inside.
Take Genesis 1:3. God said, Let there be light. Nothing in that sentence is a picture. It is something you feel before you can describe it, and color is the honest way to paint it. Or Jeremiah 29:11, thoughts of peace and an expected end. Try to draw that. You cannot draw it. But you can paint what it is like to be held by it on a hard morning, and that is abstraction doing its proper work.
There is a practical side too. A painting with no lettering hangs as a painting. It sits in a modern room or a farmhouse room without announcing itself, and a visitor who did not come to talk about faith is not put on the spot. The verse is on the page, in the title, and in whatever you feel like saying when somebody asks.
How to look at one
Stand back first and let the color do what it does. Then read the verse it came from, and look again. Most people tell me the second look is a different painting.
Where the work lives
There are four doors, and they hold different things.
- This store is the open edition: the paintings on canvas, printed to order in the United States, framed or unframed, ready to hang. It is the way to live alongside the work without spending like a collector.
- Mark Lawrence Gallery holds the collector editions, small editions of uniques, each hand embellished across the whole surface in clear impasto, signed, with a certificate. Nothing there is printed to order.
- VerseVisions sets the paintings beside the verses they came from, with a word on each. Free to read.
- Mark Lawrence Art carries open-edition prints and home décor through Fine Art America.
Why I do this
I am here as a servant. I am doing what I can to encourage people, to lift them up, and to brighten their days with art that I hope will lead them to the Father. That is the whole of it.
I have painted Scripture since 2008, one verse at a time, from a studio in Georgia, and it still surprises me that there is always another one waiting. If you would like to see how one of these lands on your own wall, send me a photo of it at hello@christianmodernart.com and I will show you.
In Jesus,
Mark