Category Archives: The Arts

7 Words

There is a new page showing on our top level menu, entitled “Meditations on 7 Words.” While we are still six weeks away from Good Friday, I have taken yesterday’s beginning of Lent as an occasion to collect the Good Friday meditations I have written over the years and publish them there. I invite you to read them.

And if you are interested in a series of meditations for each day of Lent, you might check out this booklet, a collaborative effort both in its writing and its illustration. Nancy has taken a collaborative art project that she helped design for a retreat last summer and reconfigured and repurposed it to illustrate these meditations written by fellow parishioners.

Introducing Nancy’s Art

Nancy says, “I’ve spent much of my working career applying visual arts to practical problems—as graphic designer for paying clients and as pro bono designer for children’s advocacy and church organizations. These paintings are the art I do for myself.

“Acrylics are a delightfully diverse medium. Apply them thin as a wash or thick as modeling paste. Apply in layers—for instance, adding complementary colors successively to yield complex color patterns. Blot, wipe, scrunch, splatter.  Acrylic glazes are a versatile way to incorporate the textures, shapes, and colors of found objects into a painting.

“I am fascinated with leaves. As stamps, masks, and appliqués, leaves find their way onto many of my paintings.”

In this post (below) we introduce some of the works Nancy has created using leaves as a theme. (Note also on the menu above, the addition of a gallery page with these same paintings. We will be adding other gallery pages, so keep checking back.)

Some of these paintings will be included in the Morgan Arts Council Ice House “Freedom of Expression” Exhibit, Berkeley Springs, WV, September 25 through November 8.

Nancy will also be teaching some of these techniques in a workshop at the Ice House, September 26.