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Eric
Nykamp is a painter, a musician, a social worker, a
teacher, a writer and a new father. Eric
has a great interest in the relationship between
art and psychology. He teaches a Sunday School class for
artists and recently received a grant to turn his class
curriculum into a book. He plays piano in his church’s
very funky praise band and is
very active in MANNA, a local group of Christian
artists. But perhaps his greatest role is that of father
to Jasmine and Lily, the two beautiful, young daughters
that he and his wife Yee Lam have.
In his own words:
I am an
artist. I am created by God and God creates me. He made
me just as I am, a work in progress always on display. I
create because I can and because I must. When I create,
I am close to God, because I am both doing what I was
created to do and because at that moment I image the
Creator God. My daily life is inextricably intertwined
with my art. It is the inspiration for my art, and my
art is a mirror of my life. My paintings are the
footprints of my daily walk with God.
In a similar
way my artistic life and spiritual life often parallel
each other greatly. When I am feeling creative, I feel
closer to God and am more likely to be spending time
with God. One day I was reflecting on this point and I
realized that what seemed to connect the two was
discipline. The discipline to be diligent in my art was
the same discipline that would help me to routinely seek
God’s will for inspiration from my relationship with
God; my sketching and painting become a time of “visual
devotion.”
It is during
these visual devotions, however, that God communicates
to me about my daily life. The struggles I have creating
in many ways speak to the struggles I have with myself,
with others, and with the world. My artistic wrestling
is made of the same stuff that my daily struggles are.
There is no separation just as the spiritual and
material world are interconnected. We are made, body and
soul, in the image of God. God is our creator and He
dances with our spirit to the drumbeat of our
imagination. The process of making art itself has
allowed me to be open-to listen if God wants to
communicate something to me. Sometimes, I would draw or
paint for hours with no such awareness. Sometimes I
would go for months without any such connection. But
through the practice of regular art making I was
routinely developing habits of being open to the
movements of God. I have come to call this artistic
prayer-the prayer of non-verbal creative expression.
This ‘visual prayer” is what my art is about.
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