Innovations in spiritual art are often new manifestations of the transcendent.
Spiritual thinking is at the heart of what I create. I have found, for example, that even when doodling during a meeting, I am continually pulled—almost unconsciously—to the figure of a rayed sun beaming itself out intensely in every direction. If that is not a spiritual image, I don’t know what is.
One theological principle particularly compels me. The traditional attributes of God include his being infinite. The implications of an infinite God is that he is both personal and impersonal, static and kinetic, male and female, immutable and ever-changing—and fundamentally mysterious. Who are we to say otherwise, to restrict the nature of a transcendent being?
Doesn’t everyone sense, consciously or otherwise, some warm, radiant, benthic, infinite center to all things? I think of Kong Qiu, better known as Confucius: At the summit of being, all see and know the principle of the One. If I can in some small way evoke this center with a force of freshness and mystery, one that neither spells itself out or demands specific theological reactions—then I’m satisfied. Of course my image is utterly insufficient. But if it leads to an unease, a sudden shifting out of balance, if the viewer simply glimpses some dark, incandescent essence, then he or she may be set on the spiritual path, or moved further along it. I consider that a sacred result.
--Tim J. Myers, creator of Center (image above)
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