When did sketching start to feel like a spiritual exercise? How did sketching start to feel like a prayer?
I really can not say.
My History of Sketching
Most of us, myself included, remember drawing as a kid. I think most kids do. And as I grew up I gave it up, as most kids, do. At least publicly. One of my grandmothers giving me art books and I enjoying learning (and drawing) from them. I loved my art classes in Junior High. In High School my drawing had shifted to the drafting classes I took. That’s kind of the way it stayed for years.
Sure, I would draw, but it was to capture an interesting idea (like this one above) that I wanted to remember. Sometimes they were of boats in the margins of my notes during a meeting or class. 😊
Sketching as Developing our Right Brains
It was during my early ministry that I ran across a quote from Matthew Fox regarding art as a type of spiritual exercise, as it opened the Right Side of our brains*. At that time, I was doing enough other creative work that I didn’t get what he was talking about.
A few years ago that I started sketching again. Not to get across ideas, per se, but more in the sense of recording what I was seeing. About this time, I “discovered” Urban Sketching. I am not sure, however, if that is really what I’m interested in/describes what I’m doing. Be that as it may.
I gave up sketching for a year or so. During this absence I realized I was missing something.
Sketching as Seeing as Paying Attention as a Spiritual Exercise
Ian Fennelly mentions the layers of seeing that sketching provides. I’ve noticed this, too. As I draw something I notice something else, and something else, and … .
In the process of sketching my mind seems to settle. The talking; the internal conversations; the chatter calm and quiet. I start to pay attention in a new way. I notice what is right there. Or perhaps my imagination starts to take over as to what could be there. I don’t always draw from what I see.
Why I Sketch as a Spiritual Exercise
It is in the quieting of the mind through paying attention that I enter something much like meditation. A feeling similar to contemplation occurs with the settling of the sketching experience. And I find myself entering a type of prayer.
That is what I mean when I say that sketching is a form of a spiritual exercise.
And like good prayer, I leave feeling more grounded into my True Self.
So, may it be with you.
Blessed be
*I wish I could remember where I ran across this quote and idea. If you know, please let me know in the comments.
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By the way, here’s a link to the anchor drawing I had in the above photo: Charles H. Vilas. The Saga of Direction: A Cruising Cutters First 50 Years. New York: Seven Seas Press, 1978 (see page 173ff)
Currently I’ve been reading Philip Jenkins. The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia-and How It Died.
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The links to Matthew Fox and Ian Fennelly are to their webpages, respectively.
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