Expanded Artist Statement

These portraits are the original people at the dawn of loneliness—human creatures asking one another, “Where has the One gone who made us?” These paintings are the portrayal of a slowly dawning realization, a coming to understand the delicate, many faceted loss of the God Person—a presence at once withdrawn. I have sought to paint the moment of ‘lostness’ as it is stunned into silent searching.  It is the time before the twisting, writhing struggle for survival sets in.  Here is the moment of darkened wonder when stillness rolls over and begins rifling the world for the meaning of existence.  This is the original moment of “Weltshmertz”, a historical word without English correspondent, meaning world pain connected to the sensation of the insufficiency of existence.  When God became hidden, this sensation of insufficiency penetrated the human heart and made its home there. This work explores the notion that it is the hidden face of God Himself that is the origin of pervasive human sorrow and loneliness, the true origin of Weltshmertz.  “But when you hid your face from me I was dismayed” Psalm 30:7. These paintings are the portrayal of that dismay. 

Here is our inherited human heart of sadness that has fumbled blood-streaked through time calling, “Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud; be gracious to me and answer me!  You have said, “Seek my face.” My heart says to you, “Your face, Lord, do I seek.  Hide not your face from me”. Psalm 27:8-9

Here is our long ago mother and father trying to remember the face of God.  I have painted human creatures attempting to inhabit a place where they know, “the voice of the Lord makes the deer give birth” (Psalm 29:9), but they themselves can hear nothing but wind.  Yet, even that wind is scented with desire, and all along the lengthy strands of an eternal breeze soars a promise that one day The Face will return.