Landscape

When I reached 25 years at Pivot, they gave me a nice bonus. At first I thought, “Maybe I can buy an Eames chair,” but no, it wasn’t THAT nice. :) In the end, I bought the painting above. It is a “cloudscape” by Chris Overvoorde, who was a professor at Calvin University, where I went to college. Ever since I saw his paintings I wished I could own one. When I looked into it, though, they were beyond my budget. This “found money” bonus let me buy something I love but would never have purchased otherwise.

If you know me, you know I love clouds. There’s something about them that fills me with awe. His paintings are very large as you can kind of see in the photo below of a triptych installed at Calvin. (The one I purchased isn’t as large as that, but a good size.) The hugeness of the paintings to mimic the hugeness of the sky is one of the things I love about them. In real life, “you become small” under the vastness of the sky, as he says he wants you to experience in front of his canvases.

When I experience that shrinkage, that becoming-small feeling, it draws my heart and mind to God. I am small in front of him, too. This always makes me ask the Psalmist’s question, “What is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?” (Psalm 8 - a beautiful musical rendition) Knowing he loves puny little me with a deep, unchanging love fills me with love for him in return.

Landscapes are a response to the technical problems of the landscape, or, actually, the cloudscape....I see in clouds their heavenly, cosmic aspect. They give me a feeling of smallness. Many of my paintings have been very large, because in that way you become a participant in the painting. You actually experience a shrinkage; you become small in front of the vastness of the canvas."--Chris Stoffel Overvoorde (1934-2019), professor of art, Calvin University

How about you? What makes your soul fill with awe? I hope that when it happens you, too, remember God loves you. You in particular. You just as you are.