"Grace makes Beauty out of Ugly Things"

There's been a lot of talk recently about grace. Becci B commented on inthesource.blogspot.com how much Christians like to talk about grace on their blogs. Long may it continue!

The last couple of weeks have been difficult in various ways. At the risk of sounding dramatic I'd say they have been the most spiritually challenging three weeks I can remember. For a moment, I thought I might loose a lot of things I hold dear. When you consider the possibilty that you might loose everything you realise with greater clarity that if you did, what actually would remain? when all else goes, all you have left is grace. I've been imagining what life might be like if, really, all I had left was grace. Would it be enough?

Is grace enough? Today I can say with all my heart, yes. It's enough. It's more than enough, It's all that we have. Not just that, it gives us everything else we hold dear. The only reason I can cry over loosing so much is because it is given to me by grace in the first place. It's grace that gives all and grace that allows all to remain. I don't thaink I've ever appreciated grace as much as I have these last couple of days.

Please, Christian bloggers, don't ever get tired of talking about grace.

In the words of one dear Irishman, "When she goes to work you can hear her strings, grace finds beauty in everything"

Much of my work deals with issues of aspiration. Here's an image from a recent set of work concerning the hope of transcendence. The sketch is made intensively with a ball point pen onto some note paper a friend ripped out his pad for me. The image takes us up to something Other, divine, super-spiritual but the every day nature of the tools used to capture the image bring the transcendent down to the every day. Heaven come down to earth.

The series has ten drawing of a similar nature, each encased in a deep set box frame, appearing more like artifacts in an archeological display case than works of art in a gallery. Do tell me what you think folks.

Having been given the gentlest of rows by blogging friends to get somethin up on this site - here's a little art work hott off the press.

I came across this letter in a second hand book shop over Christmas and thought the words were absolutley incredible. You just couldn't have made something like that up. The pencil sketch comes fromt the front cover of a mills and boon novel. There's plenty of mileage to make a word piece out of this I'm sure.