Studio to Street: the Art Exhibition

Firstly, I want to say that I am really happy that I have take three months out of my schedule for this Arts Internship in London. It´s been great to have taken a break from my regular kind of work, and do the kind of work that we as a mission-organisation say we do: Telling people about Jesus.

The exhibition-space in the church that we are using,
my three painting are in the middle in the back, they form one story.
I´ve tried to unify this story by the flower-petals on the floor.

Photo: Johanna Liste Vargas

First piece: Her perfect idea

The first piece is a collage, I made it after we came back from our  outreach. Our experiences of the Internship have gotten a place in this picture. People we have met, and places we have travelled. The ink-drawings of the buildings are all drawn on location in the cities.
In this picture, a girl on the red backgrounds is picking up petals everywhere she goes, from those petals, she wants to make a living and perfect flower.
At the bottom-right corner, the girl has given up her search for petals, she sees that she never able to get her perfect flower together from dead petals. She needs the something much greater than petals in a jar.
With this picture, I firstly want to express my own process of coming up with the best possible idea for the things I work on. I set high standards for myself, and see often that I cannot realise them myself. I need help, and I need another way of thinking and work. But most of all, I am dependant on God´s grace. Secondly, It´s a story that everyone can relate to, we are all putting a lot of effort into realising our own dreams.

Photo: Johanna Liste Vargas

Second piece: Kindness carries

With this picture, I wanted to visualise how it is God´s kindness that leads us back to Him. I imagined God´s kindness to be a big horse that he sends out to physically carry straggling people back to Himself. It´s like the scene in the Lord of the Rings, where Brego picks up Aragorn from the water. When and how this kind black horse will come for someone, is always a different story.
In my personal experience, I have not been picked up by God´s kindness before after I had surrendered my own efforts to right my own wrongs.
The black horse represents Jesus, he alone can carry us back to God. The only thing we need to do is to keep holding on to Him.

Photo: Johanna Liste Vargas

Third piece: Love fulfilled

In the last picture, the girl and the black horse meet with another huge horse. It is an image of what the Bible says our relationship with God can look like. When God´s love is completed among us through Jesus, we can stand before God unashamed and with full confidence. I think that we all long to know that they are completely loved, and to be sure that all our wrongs have been taken away.

Why horses?
I painted horses because I like to paint horses. Horses have a very different nature then us people, in the same way God is very different from us. The girl is saved by something other then her own kind. The same goes for God´s saving grace, it is something very different and better then any solution we can find here on on earth. Another reason I have used horses, is that they are very relatable animals, they have personality. God is personal, and not a force in the sky.

For those interested, I put a big part of my Arts Internship-sketchbook online. It mostly has sketches for the visual arts that I did, but also some teaching notes and random doodles.