Collage is often used to show that art has no authentic meaning apart from some collected diversity. Truth and individual creativity are blurred and manipulated. My purpose in layering images and texts into the surface of my paintings is to bring unity out of diversity and to point to the truth and the mystery of Christ. He reveals mysteries and speaks daily in creation (Psalm 19) and is called “the mystery hidden for ages.” He is the Creator of things seen and unseen, Spirit and flesh and the Word Incarnate. He alone unifies all seeming dichotomies (Col. 1:15ff: “…in Him all things hold together”). The Master of layered meanings and metaphor brings beauty and grace to a broken world. My work as an artist and a believer in Christ is an attempt to do the same.
Elementary Dead Reckoning (’09)
12″ x 12″
mixed media and oil on panel
(also available as a giclee print 12″ x 12″ on all rag watercolor paper)
The title is taken from an espionage WWII book called Air Navigation and is embedded into this painting. Elementary Dead Reckoning is the process of estimating one’s position, and this term caught my attention as it relates to our position before God. We are dead-men walking!
The word “reckoning” means to reconcile or to make an account even or equal. Since we are dead, we are unable to reckon our own position before the Creator of the universe. He is the Dead-Reckoner, whose substitutionary death reckons mankind.
The birds, natural air navigators, perfectly illustrate God’s reckoning and protection in another way. The bird at the top of the painting seems to be suspended by strings, which are actually mathematical lines to figure one’s position or dead reckoning. This small bird references my Banding Series about God’s sovereign care as He captures us in “the nets of God” (see my Web site: www.carolbomer.com).