Comments on: Catholic Church Seeks Religious Art, But is it Searching the Right Places? http://iconia.canonist.com/2008/06/08/catholic-church-seeks-religious-art-but-is-it-searching-the-right-places/ Wherever faith meets art. Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:52:21 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.5 by: Ed P http://iconia.canonist.com/2008/06/08/catholic-church-seeks-religious-art-but-is-it-searching-the-right-places/#comment-30791 Mon, 09 Jun 2008 13:17:06 +0000 http://iconia.canonist.com/2008/06/08/catholic-church-seeks-religious-art-but-is-it-searching-the-right-places/#comment-30791 I think you are right when you say "But maybe the Vatican should go out on a limb here and pick the faithful and resist the temptation of bringing celebrities in to do believers’ jobs." However there is a place in the Vatican line up for artists who produce work which gives a spiritual message without being tied to a specific belief system. This may be a more fruitful area for the Pope to examine. For a lot of artists, producing their work is an expression of their spiritual side. Some use it as a technique to contact their spiritual nature and in the process produce their work. Often this work is abstract but if you can 'get into' the work you can get a glimpse of the journey the artist undertook while producing the piece. For me producing art is a method of sharing spiritual insights in a visual form. I don’t consider my work to be of a particular religion or promoting any particular philosophy and I believe it is the same for a lot of other artists. We produce ‘spiritual art’ because it is our mission in life and what we feel a need to share our vision. The Vatican has a vast pool of artists to choose from but I’m not sure they will find them if the look to the ‘world-famous’ artists club. *Ed P I think you are right when you say “But maybe the Vatican should go out on a limb here and pick the faithful and resist the temptation of bringing celebrities in to do believers’ jobs.”

However there is a place in the Vatican line up for artists who produce work which gives a spiritual message without being tied to a specific belief system. This may be a more fruitful area for the Pope to examine.

For a lot of artists, producing their work is an expression of their spiritual side. Some use it as a technique to contact their spiritual nature and in the process produce their work. Often this work is abstract but if you can ‘get into’ the work you can get a glimpse of the journey the artist undertook while producing the piece.

For me producing art is a method of sharing spiritual insights in a visual form. I don’t consider my work to be of a particular religion or promoting any particular philosophy and I believe it is the same for a lot of other artists. We produce ‘spiritual art’ because it is our mission in life and what we feel a need to share our vision.

The Vatican has a vast pool of artists to choose from but I’m not sure they will find them if the look to the ‘world-famous’ artists club.

*Ed P

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