Probably one of the most interesting things about this piece is that it was originally part of another artwork. “Seasons Change” is 12″ wide and 16″ high but it came from a much larger piece that was 40″ x 40″. I have said goodbye to some of my older larger pieces (that are too big for traveling in my current car!) and I had them cut down to more manageable sizes. If you look at the background image in this artwork, you can see the ghost of a large dragonfly in the background. That dragonfly, the palm frond texture and some butterflies were all in that larger original artwork. This reminds me that in art as in life, sometimes we have to build on what came before.
I have to confess that I am a collector. I come from a long line of collectors and I really try to control my collecting, but there it is nonetheless. I was talking about collecting stuff to my brother one day and he expressed that he had always wanted a Cabinet of Curiosities to hold his own collection. I thought a bit and agreed, “Oh yes, that would be quite wonderful!” A special place for all my unique things would make the collection a positive thing rather than a habit to be confessed. Somehow naming things as curiosities and creating a space for them changes how they are perceived.
New Life, photo based mixed media on 14×14″ wood panel by Judith Monroe
Suddenly all the odd little things that I gather and bring home are bestowed with a higher status. They are labeled as curiosities and are organized and photographed and put together in ways that are pleasing and meaningful, giving them greater value. A nest that fell out of a tree is no longer just garden debris but is now a piece of natural history or a metaphor for a stage of life. Dead insects are invaluable jewels, butterflies become symbols of transformation, and fallen birds are reminders to make the most of our brief lives.
Cabinets of curiosities were first popular during the Renaissance; cabinets were not necessarily a piece of furniture, but could be a room or a whole building. This month, I am exhibiting a small portion of my collection of curiosities in the form of artworks, some presented as individual specimens, and others put together into dioramas of a sort, in the tradition of the collectors who first created cabinets of curiosities. Some of the specimens I present are more mundane and from my local explorations, others are more exotic and have traveled great distance to become part of my collection.
These kinds of collections have historically been brought together to spur the imagination and stir curiosity and wonder, and thereby learning. So you are invited to carefully inspect each artwork here, to reflect on the secrets that are revealed and to imagine where each thing came from and what it means. Perhaps you will even be inspired to start a collection of you own or simple add to one you’ve already started.
Microart: Each piece is only a two inch square. Clockwise: Black Beetle #4, Honey Bee #2, Cabbage Moth, Dragonfly; each is a photo transfer and mixed media on stretched canvas, $45, currently available at Sparrow Gallery in Sacramento.
I have always had a fondness for tiny things. As a kindergartner, I would walk the long way home from school through the tiny downtown of Montrose, California, and stop to stare in the toy store window, examining every inch of the large dollhouse that sat there. It was pure magic to me that things could be so intricately detailed on such a small scale. A little later, I had a little plastic ballerina, probably one inch high, for whom I made tiny lace tutus and built a cardboard house and a little paper man to keep her company. As I grew, I created dioramas in shoe boxes for book reports. To this day, miniatures are among treasures I keep in my studio.
So when I was first asked to create microart, it was an idea that appealed to me on a very basic level. Tiny little works of art, not more that two inches square, easy to collect and treasure, so intimate on their scale that they are immediately charming. But then I had to decide what exactly I could do that small, what would feel appropriate and be achievable? It took me a while to figure it out and then fit it into my schedule, but I came to the conclusion that my fondness for insects was the perfect match for my attraction to microart and so the Insect Series was born.
This initial batch of tiny insect artworks are currently available at Sparrow Gallery in Sacramento.
“Freedom” by Judith Monroe. Photo transfers and mixed media on cradled wood panel, 42×42″ available through silent auction at Bridgeway Christian Church, contact for details.
Every so often I paint on stage at church during the weekend services. People who know me have gotten used to hearing me talk about this aspect of my creative life, but a lot of people are a bit surprised at first. I attend Bridgeway Christian Church, a fairly large church in Roseville, California, not exactly the kind of traditional church I was raised in or that many people think of when talking about church. We certainly never had artists painting in church when I when I was growing up, so how did I get to this point?
Several years ago, Bridgeway had a year of learning about different styles of worship, and it was during that year of teaching that I first saw artwork created as part of a church service. As a visual artist, it was incredibly exciting and touched me in a deep way. That same year, I was interviewed for a video and then invited to paint during worship for the first time. It was a frightening, exhilarating and wonderful experience and within a year or so more, I was coordinating other artists to regularly create on stage during our church services.
More recently I was one of the artists onstage during another special teaching on different expressions of worship and I was asked why we create visual art on stage during our services. I was able to give a really brief answer, but I thought it would be good to give a more in depth answer to that here.
The first reason that I paint on stage at church is simply that I am a visual person, that is just how I was made. When I read the Bible and pray, I see images. When I remember, it is primarily in pictures and flashes. When I plan what to do, it is again in imagery – I truly envision things. It can be so bad that I have caught myself walking or driving and realized that I better pay attention to the real world around me because I was seeing something completely unrelated in my mind and I wasn’t as present as I should have been. Conversely, when I want to really focus on a thought or concept, sometimes I have to close my eyes because the visuals around me are too distracting. So images are my language, the way God speaks to me and I speak to God, and how we interact with each other. My art is most naturally a conversation between me and God.
“Be Transformed” by Judith Monroe. Photo transfers and mixed media on cradled wood panel, 42×42″ available through silent auction at Bridgeway Christian Church, contact for details.
But that only explains why I create images, not why I do it on stage in front of thousands of other people over the course of a weekend. Why subject others to my conversation with God? Because when I am on stage at church, I am available as another tool for the Holy Spirit to use to reach other people. As surely as I am more often sitting in church and not up front, there are so many other visually oriented people sitting in that room when I create there. In fact, the first time I came to Bridgeway with my family, they had incorporated children’s drawings of the Christmas story into the the Christmas program and I was so touched that it brought tears to my eyes.
I cannot count the times that people have come up to me after a service and had them tell me how my artwork had touched them or spoken to them in a powerful way. I have had people tell me that God has spoken to them very clearly through art I was creating, while others have simply said it was wonderful to have visual arts on stage, as that is how they relate to God as well. And any time people are coming forward to talk, there are undoubtedly more who were impacted but did not come up to tell me so. It is always an honor and a blessing to me to know that I can be a tool for ministering to others in my church as well as in a traditional exhibition.
Finally, people often ask what happens to the artwork after the service is over. I will always take works painted on stage back to my studio and give them the finishing touches that all my artworks get: fine tuning, painting the edges and varnishing. Artwork will then usually be on display at the church and available for purchase through a silent auction process, with proceeds directly benefiting the church. (I also receive a percentage, just as I would with a gallery.) It’s always a joy for me when someone has been touched deeply enough to want to live with a piece of art, no matter how or where it touches them.
Playing with a photo of the piece I’m working on lets me experiment with different ideas before committing to them on the panel itself.
“How do you know when you’re done?” People often ask me that question and I usually give them some flip response, “Sometimes I don’t!” It’s true, it can be hard to know when I’m done creating a piece of artwork. Sometimes a deadline is pushing at me, so I can’t just keep going. Sometimes it’s easy to tell, the piece just feels finished and I happily send it off into the world, confident of its completion. And then there are times that I really struggle with knowing when a piece is done. With the nature of my process, adding layer upon layer and usually obscuring at least part of what lies below, it can be hard to know when to stop.
Take the piece I’m working on now, for instance. It has a long and storied past. Underneath lies a completely different painting, something that came back to the studio and then I decided I could do far better if I started over from scratch. It’s pretty easy to paint on top of something, once you get over the emotional part. I know, some of you just gasped at the horror of me obliterating an artwork, but most painters I know do this sort of thing, they just don’t tell you. We just gesso over the old piece; gesso is a like paint primer, and it’s always the first layer that I put on my wood panels. When I gesso over an older piece, I’ve got my texture already in place and I work like I would after the layer of texture when starting with a fresh panel.
Back to the work at hand: this piece is already the second set of imagery on this panel, painted live during a couple church services and put on display for a while, as is normal. But at a certain point it just didn’t feel right to me. I don’t know how else to explain it. I certainly felt happy with it when I finished it and put it out there, but then I saw it again after not seeing it for a while. And it just didn’t sit right with me. Pretty soon, the feeling grew and became a bit of a nag. When the opportunity came, I brought the artwork back home to my studio.
At that point I just let it sit in the studio, out in view where my subconscious could work on it. I don’t know about you, but my subconscious is a busy little creature, working on several different projects in the background until it gets tired of being ignored. As I was finishing up my most recent set of live paintings, (more on those soon,) I felt the strong urge to tackle this one. Mind you, I have several of other things sitting in the studio waiting for me to get back to them, but sometimes certain things just need attention right now, thank you very much. So I got to it.
It’s funny how this sort of thing works. I could tell you that the border was feeling too overwhelming in this piece, so I felt like I needed to work with that and then it felt like it was missing something, so I’m working on adding to it now, and I’m pretty sure it’s going to be changing more than I thought it would but I try not to think too hard about these things. And yes, my mind works in run-on sentences because one thing just leads to another and if I didn’t go with it things would get boring.
And I’m sorry, but I still don’t know how I know I’m done. Sometimes I really don’t know, but I have to stop sometime. Usually.
Once a month I get together with other visual artists at my church (if you’re a Sacramento area believing artist, contact me for an invite!) We’ve been doing visual meditations on scripture when we get together and I was inspired to suggest that we start making artist trading cards based on those meditations. So we gave ourselves the homework of creating artist trading cards and bringing them back to trade with each other this month. Tonight is the night we get back together again, so today I made my cards. (Note to my students – yes, I procrastinate, too!)
I am so happy with these cards that I didn’t really want to let them go, so I have scanned them at high resolution, allowing me to do other things with them later. I’m not exactly sure what that will be yet, but I’ve got ideas percolating and time will tell which ones really work out. At any rate, I’ll start with sharing them here, along with the scripture that inspired them below.
“Rush of Wings” Ezekiel 3:13, mixed media artist trading card by Judith Monroe
“Sweet as Honey” Ezekiel 3:3, mixed media artist trading card by Judith Monroe
“Whether They Listen or Not” Ezekiel 3:11, mixed media artist trading card by Judith Monroe
And he said to me, “Son of man, eat what is before you, eat this scroll; then go and speak to the people of Israel.”So I opened my mouth, and he gave me the scroll to eat.
Then he said to me, “Son of man, eat this scroll I am giving you and fill your stomach with it.” So I ate it, and it tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth.
He then said to me: “Son of man, go now to the people of Israel and speak my words to them.You are not being sent to a people of obscure speech and strange language, but to the people of Israel—not to many peoples of obscure speech and strange language, whose words you cannot understand. Surely if I had sent you to them, they would have listened to you.But the people of Israel are not willing to listen to you because they are not willing to listen to me, for all the Israelites are hardened and obstinate.But I will make you as unyielding and hardened as they are. I will make your forehead like the hardest stone, harder than flint. Do not be afraid of them or terrified by them, though they are a rebellious people.”
And he said to me, “Son of man, listen carefully and take to heart all the words I speak to you.Go now to your people in exile and speak to them. Say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says,’ whether they listen or fail to listen.”
Then the Spirit lifted me up, and I heard behind me a loud rumbling sound as the glory of the Lord rose from the place where it was standing.It was the sound of the wings of the living creatures brushing against each other and the sound of the wheels beside them, a loud rumbling sound.The Spirit then lifted me up and took me away, and I went in bitterness and in the anger of my spirit, with the strong hand of the Lord on me.I came to the exiles who lived at Tel Aviv near the Kebar River. And there, where they were living, I sat among them for seven days—deeply distressed.
Refuge – Photo transfers, collage, acrylics, wax pastel, color pencil and pressed dried foliage on canvas (36×48″) by Judith Monroe
As I prepared to paint for our worship night a couple weeks ago, I prayed and meditated and God gave me some images of wings and a nest with eggs. In my own personal symbology, I have come to associate wings and feathers with angels and a nest with heaven, the place that Jesus went to prepare for us, so I felt good in using this as the basis for my painting, and a background of clouds seemed fitting. After I was done painting, my daughter told me that the imagery made her think of Psalm 91, which to me was a confirmation that God was speaking. My prayer is that he would speak to you through this imagery, too.
Psalm 91
1 Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
2 I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress,
my God, in whom I trust.”
3 Surely he will save you
from the fowler’s snare
and from the deadly pestilence.
4 He will cover you with his feathers,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.
5 You will not fear the terror of night,
nor the arrow that flies by day,
6 nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness,
nor the plague that destroys at midday.
7 A thousand may fall at your side,
ten thousand at your right hand,
but it will not come near you.
8 You will only observe with your eyes
and see the punishment of the wicked.
9 If you say, “The Lord is my refuge,”
and you make the Most High your dwelling,
10 no harm will overtake you,
no disaster will come near your tent.
11 For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways;
12 they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.
13 You will tread on the lion and the cobra;
you will trample the great lion and the serpent.
14 “Because he loves me,” says the Lord, “I will rescue him;
I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.
15 He will call on me, and I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble,
I will deliver him and honor him.
16 With long life I will satisfy him
and show him my salvation.”
This piece, titled “Fallen” is one of the artworks that I have at Xanadu Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona, right now. I am often touched by the beauty of a fallen bird, in this case a small goldfinch that I think flew into a large window. This is the basis for my ongoing Memento Mori series; inspired by the beauty of things even in death and expressing the idea of cherishing life, especially in light of death and the fleeting nature of physical life. The fallen birds also remind me of the Bible story in Matthew of how God knows when even a small bird falls, and how much more he watches over each of us, which gives me great comfort when I feel like things aren’t going the way that I would like them to, and it’s this idea that gives this piece its title. This piece is a little different than some of my work with the inclusion of the frame around the image itself. It has actual leaves and a seedling, as well as one of my sketches and collected papers in the layers. Like most of my pieces, I signed this piece in texture in the lower right hand corner, as well as on the back of the piece. Many people say my Memento Mori series reminds them of the “circle of life” that they find uplifting.
This work started as one of the pieces that I paint live during a church service, it was first painted over the course of two services on one Sunday morning, and was inspired by the subject of marriage, which was the sermon topic. I approached the subject by looking to my own set of natural symbols, here a nest represents a home. This nest holds broken eggs and dead baby birds that stand in for the difficulties that any marriage is bound to face, but is also accompanied by a pair of butterflies, a pair of lives that are transformed by the bond of marriage. The nest image consists of nine separate iPhone photographs, creating a photo mosaic that was first posted to Instagram – I often create photo mosaics there that are later used in artworks. Like most of my work, The Marriage Bed depicts nature and consists of many layers of media, but unlike most, I came back to it after maybe a year from when I first thought I had finished it and realized that it needed a little something more, so I came back to it and added more layers of paint and texture around the outer edges of the piece. I have used actual dried pressed flower stalks as collage elements, as well as my own photographs and collected papers. People often enjoy finding all the little things hidden in my work.
The Marriage Bed – photo transfers, color pencil, acrylic, ephemera, wax pastel & dried pressed flowers on cradled panel (40×40″) Contact for availability.
