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EMERGING JOY: Paintings from the Inside-Out

Church of the Servant, Grand Rapids, MI

When I began painting in 2003, at 52, I did not intend or foresee a third career as an artist. I’d received a calling to “Do Art,” not unlike the one that had 20 years earlier—seemingly out of the blue—brought me to ordained ministry. I’d learned my (and Jonah’s) lesson then: When asked to serve it’s far less complicated to say Yes than No, even while wondering why or how. Getting on with it, I learned to paint with oils.

In the beginning, my efforts were focused entirely on outer references: shapely fruit arranged for a still life, or beloved scenes rendered as landscapes. This orientation served my art, and me, well. Indeed, prompted by a visit to Sleeping Bear Dunes in 2007, I saw the dazzling colors of Lake Michigan for the first time and declared, “I could paint here for the rest of my life.” In 2010 I moved from Atlanta, GA to Frankfort, MI where I found a ready audience for my work.

Several years later, however, in November,2016 I was prompted to relinquish outer references and turn inward. Reacting with terror to the results of the presidential election and tormented by my mind’s relentless litany of “what ifs,” I couldn’t sleep. And, when I went to the easel, I found it impossible to paint the attractive pictures that had brought me recognition and commercial success.

Instead, I made ugly paintings. Matching my mood, I scribbled with black paint directly from a large tube, smearing it with my hands or slopping it around using a brush wet with solvent—on a large surface. As I pushed the paint around, I discovered that certain gestural sweeps, along with drips and splatters, spoke to me even as they seemed to be me. Was there some kind of language hidden within this free-style calligraphy?

Soon, my marks came to resemble birds. To my relief, these spirited forms didn't turn out to be greeting card tweety birds; rather these “birds of the air" seemed to reveal themselves as intuitive messengers of hope and healing for a troubled world and I began to sleep better. Following the birds' intuitive leads, a large body of work began to form itself that eventually became the multimedia, collaborative installation BIRDS FLY IN: A Human Refuge. EMERGING JOY is the first exhibit since BIRDS FLY IN featuring “paintings from the Inside-Out.”

While my interest in representational painting has largely waned, I find deep satisfaction in tapping invisible inner resources for more abstract paintings. I now make it a deliberate practice to come to the blank canvas without a plan, painting to see what might be revealed. I make random marks with colors chosen not by design but on impulse, sometimes without looking at the tube I’ve picked up. My left hand often does not know what my right hand is doing. Yet, while I don’t always understand (or even “like”) the paintings, this intuitive painting process seems to invite the emergence of Something More: a quiet joy that points to what underlies existence, prior to and beyond that which claims attention in the dire repetitions of the daily news.

The works in EMERGING JOY include several intuitive abstract paintings from BIRDS FLY IN. The paintings are hung in approximately the order in which they were created and numbered accordingly. Most of the works are from the COVID-19 pandemic period. As you’ll see, birds still feature in the early pandemic works, but, curiously, new imagery begins to surface. Instead of perching (abstractly) in treetops, birds land on lily pads where they then appear to merge with lotus shapes which can be seen as both flowers and birds. Across the picture surface, there is a kind of flow—and, also, pink—an assertion of joy?!

To fully experience these works, I invite you to first take a moment to read Richard Rohr’s “We Are Called to Behold.” See if you can suspend yourself in the state of “behelding” he describes. There, immersed in the expansive space from which they arise, I pray you’ll be as blessed by the paintings of EMERGING JOY as I have been transformed in making them.

Ellie Harold

Summer, 2022

Note: This is the Artist Statement I've written for an upcoming show. I'm sharing it here because it's a very succinct chronicle of my artist's journey to date. And, also, to inspire me to keep writing on the new book about Intuitive Painting. Now seems to be time to Get On With It.

Treetop #12 (Gesture)

Summer Joy Dream 

Thinking of my upcoming show "Emerging Joy" I recalled this Meditation by Richard Rohr a friend sent me last summer. I wish I'd written this as it speaks so well to a way to engage art that deeply resonates with the spirit in which my paintings are created. " Deep calls unto deep,'  he quotes, "Center knows center and this is called 'love.'" Please enjoy and apply as needed.... 

WE ARE CALLED TO BEHOLD

Richard Rohr

When we look at art, we are usually quick to judge its value according to our own preferences based on style, color, size, location, and even country of origin! However, there is another invitation—one that goes beyond our likes and dislikes—and that is to simply “behold” it. Many of the apparitions in the Bible begin with “behold”—usually uttered as a command, an invitation, or perhaps a call to a different style of attention. In a sense, it is a giveaway that, in fact, we can and need to “switch gears” once in a while to be ready to perceive what is about to come at us. 

When I have sent people into the woods on a retreat, I learned from wilderness guide Bill Plotkin to ask them to draw a symbolic line in the sand and to truly expect things on the other side to show themselves as special, invitational, or even a kind of manifestation. We could do the same with time spent gazing at a painting, a sculpture, or immersed in poetry or music. Believe it or not, it always works somehow. On the other side of that log, or “line in the sand,” or piece of art, we start beholding. Someone who is truly beholding is silenced with the utter gratuity of a thing. We let it give us a leap of joy in the heart and in the eye. 

Once we decide to behold, we are available for awe and wonder, to be present to what is, without the filter of our preferences or the false ledger of judging things as important or not important. A much broader, much deeper, and much wider field of perception opens up, becoming an alternative way of knowing and enjoying. The soul sees soul everywhere else too: “deep calls unto deep,” as the psalmist says (42:8). Center knows center, and this is called “love.” 

Beholding happens when we stop trying to “hold” and allow ourselves to “be held” by the other. We are completely enchanted by something outside and beyond ourselves. Maybe we should speak of “behelding” because, in that moment, we are being held more than really holding, explaining, or understanding anything by ourselves. We feel ourselves being addressed more than addressing something else. This radically changes our situation and perspective. 

I invite you to “behold” something today. In my experience, you will seldom be disappointed. Find a bit of ordinary beauty—a print, a sculpture, a photograph—in your home, online, or at a museum—and gaze at it until you see it as one instance of a manifestation of the eternal creativity of God. Allow your “beholding” to move the work of art beyond its mere “relative truth” and to reveal its inherent dignity, as it is, without your interference or your labels. It becomes an epiphany and the walls of your world begin to expand.