Throughout my life as an artist/designer I have been struck with how black and white often provides focus. It’s  beautiful visual decision, but it tends to be more difficult than color.

Elegance and simplicity are very hard to achieve without being stark and lifeless. The painting on the left is the first one I painted after I met Jesus in January, 1974. Being left-handed, it reads from right to left. The simple exuberance of leaving the chaos of my life before into the reality of the creator’s world and Kingdom still hits me very hard. The harsh abstractions no longer appealed to me. There is very little of my work that I can go back to and be satisfied with what I did.

This post was triggered by an article I saw this morning about the winners in the top black and white photos competition. They are beautiful. But most of them have nothing to say. They are black and white as an abstraction.

Don’t ignore greyscale: black and white often provides focus

Lately, I’ve been working on graphite drawings. It’s been a long time since I was challenged at this deep a level. My drawings so far are so much less than powerful. They’re getting there. But, I don’t know if I’ll have the physical skills to do something like this until the New Creation. It’s one of the major things I’m looking forward to—when I get my perfect body, perfectly functional for who I am, and who The Lord wants me to be.

This inability to produce what I need to do to communicate clearly is a major frustration of this fallen world. I’m being shown how to get the anointing into my fiction. But it’s another step all together to have the anointing in reality, dealing with people in a way that edifies, comforts, and blesses.

How I long to be one with Jesus, to learn things like this. How frustrating it is to be designed to create something far beyond your natural ability. That’s the glory of knowing Jesus. He can sustain me even in the midst of a fallen world. The joy of creating butterfly, a platypus, a woman, a man completely infuses my Lord and Master. What a joy He is!

Here’s the best image from the photo competition article, in my opinion: