Liturgical Painting Project

Christ the King/Thanksgiving banner painted during the 11/19/2005 "Connections" worship service at Central Christian Church, Kettering, OH

This is my first attempt at "liturgical painting." I was asked to paint images during the "Connections" worship service. I decided to do it from the back, behind a screen made out of a bed sheet hung on a sturdy wooden frame, made by Lynn and Merle (two wonderful guys from my church). I sketched the images in a light colored crayon, making sure the wax was heavy in placed I didn't want dye to bleed through. Then I mixed up several colors of Rit dye (the stuff used to tie-dye) and pushed the dye into the fabric with foam brushes. The result was that the images appeared to the congregation at a slight delay as the dye seeped in from the back. Some of the lines even seemed to appear simultaneously.

I owe a debt to someone from Seminary for teaching me this technique, though I don't remember who it is at the moment. I saw them do it with the parables of the lost coin and the lost sheep during a chapel service. It has been a couple of years and I had to experiment a little to get it right.

The themes of this piece are Thanksgiving, Christ the King and seeing through the eyes of our heart (Ephesians 1). I started with the images in the lower right hand corner--the material things that we usually to give God thanks for at Thanksgiving--food, money, home and family. Then I painted the heart in the center, leaving a space that suggested an eye--and began to paint symbols of the immaterial blessings that we can only appreciate through the eyes of our heart--prayer, the teachings of the Lord, Communion with God, the cross, the Holy Spirit, community and the Church. I finshed by filling in the portrait of Christ the King around the heart--making it the sacred heart and adding the crown just as the minister started talking about it being Christ the King Sunday (Actually Saturday night!).

The view in this picture is from the back so it is reversed. I plan to finish it by turing it around, trimming and hemming it into a banner and using paint markers to fill in the stained glass effects and write the words "GIVE THANKS" in the top corner blank spaces.