In 2019, authors McArthur Krishna and Bethany Brady Spalding published A Girl’s Guide to Heavenly Mother, which included dozens of images of Heavenly Mother by Mormon artists around the world. In 2014, the art contest A Mother Here called for submissions of art and poetry on the subject of Heavenly Mother. Before then, images of Heavenly Mother were almost nonexistent. Although lacking official approval, Mormon artists have created numerous images of Heavenly Mother since 2012. The sudden increase in art about the divine feminine is far more varied and diverse in its conception of deity. If images of Heavenly Father and Jesus within Mormon art are a relatively recent and stable development, images of Heavenly Mother are cutting-edge and creative. At its highest levels, the LDS Church has adopted this relatively stagnant and narrow depiction of God. This version of Jesus-tall, white, and bearded-is one well-known to modern viewers and widely identifiable within European art traditions. In May 2020, the Church announced that meetinghouse foyers ought to display only paintings of Jesus Christ and offered a list of twenty-two approved paintings for this purpose, all of which featured Jesus Christ in this style. Laura Paulsen Howe, art curator for the Church History Museum, describes the Church’s embrace of images of Jesus as “a big cultural shift.” When they did appear, Church-approved images of Christ and Heavenly Father skewed heavily toward depicting white, European-looking men in an illustrative style. It was not until the mid-twentieth century that Mormon artists shifted toward portraying God, and even then did so in fairly limited ways. His goal has remained consistent throughout all periods of both his musical and artistic life: to effectively translate those sensations that are beyond the purview of our literal and prefrontal minds.For the first century of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, members generally did not condone artistic renderings of deity, including those of Christ. This step away from realism questions what is of absolute necessity in portraiture, and what can be omitted from a scene to achieve the desired effect. Makan Negahban is an LA based fine art painter and music performer. His recent artwork showcases a transition from the verisimilitude of his ornate oil paintings to a series of minimalist, brightly colored portraits using acrylics, watercolors, colored pencils and inks. Through her work she hopes to shed light not only on the beauty and power of women, but the limitlessness of our existence, equipped with the spirituality present in the human form. Her artwork dives deep into the sacred feminine essence, energy, and principle. Polek-Davis is a blossoming visionary artist who aims to produce a range of contemporary psychedelic fine art pieces for the masses. Polek-Davis and Makan Negahban share their own unique expression of Divine Femininity. In the human dimension, it means recognizing the sacredness of all life, our web of interconnection and community and celebrating the wisdom of the exploration of the Divine Feminine, artists Riley A. In the planetary dimension, it means seeing Mother Earth as our Mother, respecting her, cultivating as a symbolic relationship with her as our ground of survival. In the spiritual dimension, the Divine Feminine means valuing the feminine as an equally fundamental dynamic of the creative life force, alone with the masculine.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |