At the recent Art Workshop DISCOVERING LIGHT: THE ARTISTIC JOURNEY, participants reflected on the theme “Easter Light.” Working individually and collaboratively, they explored the symbolic and spiritual content of color, form and texture. We share, here, several of their comments and observations.

Speaking about her experience working with the materials: canvas, cardboard, wood, and polystyrene, artist Regina Jupp said, “I realized that the way we were weathering the surface—dropping things on it and stepping on it, cutting it or burning it with acid—and then adding things to it—it was very physical and kind of violent . . . Ultimately, what it ended up making me think about was our own journey—what our bodies and what our souls go through during this life—our stories—how we are weathered.”

Regina Rupp, Thieves, 2017

Artist David Bushnell also found that the physical act of transforming the raw materials into an artistic statement was a spiritually moving experience. “I wanted to express the wounds of Christ . . . When I was creating the wounds in the polystyrene, I was very aggressive—as if I was attacking the Lord—I was very choked up in the process of the doing the work. . . . I was trusting that God would somehow use that pain of meditating on Christ’s wounds to speak to others.”

David Bushnell, Wounded, 2017

Working with the concept of the empty tomb, artist Lindsey Kanaga described her process: “The surface of the polystyrene already had some lines cut in it. I saw strength and balance in those lines, so I reinforced them instead of trying to hide them. . . . Then I made a great hole in the center of the piece and that spoke to me of the empty tomb. Working with the surface, I was thinking about emptiness and brokenness and about the way you sometimes have to go through something hard, or something that feels empty, to come to joy at the other end.”

Lindsey Kanaga, Broken, 2017

For me, it’s not so much about being “an artist” as it is about finding God.—David Bushnell