Written By: Cliff McReynolds
Image: Woman With Mirror circa 1974 (12″ X 12″ Oil/Panel) © Cliff McReynolds

Creating art is a high and majestic calling, and it offends me deeply to see my profession perverted by artists who can their own shit, paint pictures by squirting paint out their anus, masturbate in public, produce endless varieties of pointless filth and self-absorbed trivia.

Prominent critics like Hilton Kramer, Robert Hughes and John Canady have vehemently expressed their disgust with such depravity. But they seem seem unaware of the infinite realm of possibilities beyond their secular orientation. I once asked Kramer if there are universal principles in art. No he replied, but there are none anywhere else either. And Walter Hopps, onetime director of the National Gallery of Modern Art once told me “I don’t know why I like your work; I’m an atheist.”

While art world eminences may be oblivious to the Holy Spirit, the sacred dimension inherent in the creative process, Bach, Blake, Handel and Michelangelo were well aware of it. Deep into the whirlwind 24 days Handel spent creating “Messiah”, he burst into tears, later said “I did think I did see all heaven before me, and the great God himself.”

The Holy Spirit is also called the Spirit of Truth. By trusting it to lead them, artists throughout history have created timeless works of art. Their art is timeless because truth is. Rembrandt’s “The Prodigal Son”, Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” and Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel Ceiling endure not only because they are beautiful, but because they tell the truth.

I sometimes sit contemplating the half finished painting on my easel, suddenly get the wonderful feeling that I have a chance to create something more beautiful and truthful than I ever have before. So do other artists of course.. And that’s when the great ones have occasionally gone on to paint paintings, compose symphonies and write poems that, as Blake put it “reveal the infinite, which was hid.” This is art at its best. This is art fulfilling its purpose. This is the art that stops you in your tracks, sends shivers down your spine, helps you find your way, enriches your life, and reminds you of things you’ve never seen, but always known.