Painting
For a long time now, I’ve wanted to make a contribution based on an American artist whom I greatly appreciate: Bob Ross (1942-1995). With his program „The Joy Of Painting„, he encouraged many people to pick up a brush and paint with oil. He had such an endearing way of introducing viewers to painting that it was impossible to switch off. In half an hour, he created landscapes, and you kept asking yourself: „Why is he putting that in there? That looks terrible!“ and then suddenly the picture looked really nice again. There was something meditative about watching him paint bushes and trees. The sound of the brush on the canvas as he rhythmically painted the leaves is still in my head. And when he made a mistake, it wasn’t a mistake, but a happy little accident that he was able to make something out of.
Mistakes and questions
Hello everyone. Welcome to the new episode of „Paint again“. My name is Robert Horse and I have been passionate about painting since my earliest childhood. It gives me a lot of pleasure, which I would like to share with you. Today we want to paint a fantastic mountain landscape together, as we know it from the Alps. The colors you need are shown on the right. Let’s go!
We need a 40 cm x 60 cm canvas, which we paint with a mixture of linseed oil and titanium white. But what is that? A small stain!
Mistakes are everywhere in this world. Major and minor mistakes make life difficult for us. And we ourselves also make mistakes. All of us do. It’s often the case that we see people’s mistakes first – as in the picture on the right above – and not all the good that’s in them.
Think about yourself…
- What do you see first in others? The mistakes or the good?
- What is your biggest mistake?
- What is the culture of mistakes in your family or at work or in your community?
- Do you have to be perfect? Are you allowed to be real?
- Are others around you allowed to be real?
- Do you find it difficult to admit weaknesses/ mistakes/ sins? Why is that the case?
Paint over
We simply paint over the stain. No problem. A small, happy incident. We cleaned it up straight away. Crap!
We can take this canvas as an image for our lives. If we think about it seriously, we see: Every one of us has faults and makes mistakes, everyone stumbles once in a while, everyone has bad thoughts, treats other people badly, lies, has dirt on them and doesn’t have a clean slate. Let’s be honest: anyone who thinks they are perfect is lying to themselves.
Many mistakes don’t go away on their own, so we have to clear things up, wipe the slate clean and clear up the mistakes. This is not always so easy in interpersonal relationships.
Because sometimes a stupid remark is enough to cause someone extreme injury in his soul. One wrong decision can affect your whole life – „I can still drive with three beers!“ and a serious accident occurs with a fatal outcome for the passenger.
Cover up
Well, after the child has fallen into the well, we’ll just paint over it. Maybe we can use that later. Let’s start with a blue sky and a few happy little clouds floating up there.
People don’t want to make mistakes, so it’s best not to talk about them and if nobody knows – all the better! Some people therefore spend a lot of energy hiding their mistakes and maintaining a flawless façade. Covering up mistakes – as in the oil painting – can sometimes work, but often it’s worse than before. The stain gets bigger. And anyway: what does it look like under the façade? When the façade crumbles, the edifice of lies collapses. The truth finds a way.
Covering up mistakes is not a new phenomenon: Adam and Eve hide from God; Cain kills Abel and acts innocent (Shall I be my brother’s keeper?)
And what do your prophets say? They whitewash these evil machinations, just as a painter covers an ugly wall with white paint.
Ezekiel 22:28a
Why don’t people admit mistakes? There is shame behind it, you become vulnerable, you want to be loved, you expect yourself to be perfect. It’s all very human and understandable.
Happy Little Accidents!?
Let’s start with a mountain. The Watzmann in Berchtesgadener Land serves as my inspiration. One of my favorite mountains. You mix Vandyck brown, black and titanium white to get a brownish gray. This is the base of the mountains, which you apply with a palette knife. Use a broad brush to bring the colors together.
There are two components to mistakes: the interpersonal component and the component between God and man. We call the second one sin.
Between us humans, mistakes can be rectified if we as „perpetrators“ admit our mistakes, make amends, bear the punishment (e.g. if a mistake results in a court hearing) and sincerely ask for forgiveness. The „victim“ makes an effort to forgive. This is not always easy and it is not always possible to forgive another person. Many things in this world remain unresolved and unforgiven.
Our sins are not „happy little accidents“, because for God sin is serious. Deadly serious! Sin is deadly – the wages of sin is [eternal] death! (Romans 6:23). There is no simple „sponge over it!“, but there is redemption through Jesus Christ.
If we deny our sins, try to hide them, deny them and do not repent, God will judge us according to our actions. For He is holy and hates sin. God and sin do not coexist.
A white canvas
With lots of white and a little black and brown in there, perhaps a dash of ultramarine, we carefully apply the second layer of paint with the palette knife. You have to make sure that the color is not mixed to death and from which direction the light is coming. This allows you to create a 3D effect.
If we make mistakes and are therefore a stained canvas, so to speak, we can try to paint over everything, but the mistakes are still there. Perhaps no longer visible to us humans, but they are visible to God. Our own works will not give us a blank canvas, but Jesus will. He gives us a blank canvas on which we can paint the picture of our lives: The mistakes are not just painted over, they are really gone! As if we were given a new, white canvas.
The mistakes of others
Mountains don’t just hang in the air. So we have to add the typical Alpine foothills with their hills and forests. The phthalo green is brought to the right brightness level with the cadmium yellow. This is how you gradually create hills and forests.
The mistake from the beginning is now history. It can no longer be seen in the picture. What is very exciting is that if you were to ask: What do you see, most people would say „a black dot“. It’s actually a white canvas (with a small black dot). I work in a microscopy lab and one of our tasks is to detect tiny defects. In companies, there are entire departments that only deal with possible errors, for example „quality control“ or „plant safety“ or „IT security“. And that’s a good thing, because people’s lives can depend on this work – no one wants glass splinters in their Nutella or a faulty airbag in an accident.
But: We are not there to constantly point out the mistakes of our fellow human beings. How do we deal with other people’s mistakes? Do we look for them? Do we only see the negative? Do we specifically point them out? Do we make fun of them? What standards do I apply myself? My own? Because these are the right ones!
Here we need to be a little more gracious with our fellow human beings. Jesus says:
Why do you see every little splinter in the eye of your fellow human being, but don’t notice the beam in your own eye?
Matthew 7:3
This means that we are just as flawed as any other person. But it doesn’t mean that we have to overlook everything and let everything go, regardless of whether it’s good or bad. It’s about the way we do things and our attitude: humility is called for. Loving correction and help is one thing, arrogance is another.
Nevertheless valuable
You can use the fan brush to paint the conifers with a lighter green – and voila! The picture is finished!
You have mistakes. So do I. Everyone does. What is very important is that none of us is worthless because we have faults – like a potato that is too big or a banana that is too crooked for a supermarket. God loves us despite our flaws and that is why He gave His Son Jesus for us:
For God loved people so much that he gave his only Son for them. Everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
John 3:16
In principle, it is quite simple: sin separates us from God and Jesus overcomes this separation through His sacrificial death on the cross. Our contribution to this is only this: To believe in this and to live our lives with Jesus Christ.
So much for today. In our lives, Jesus helps us to become free from guilt; for me, the only thing that helps after the painting trip is a bath in acetone…
Psalm 51:4-14
Wash me clean from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin;
for I know my iniquity, and my sin is ever before me.
Against you alone have I sinned and done evil in your sight, so that you may be right in your words and pure when you judge.
Behold, I was born in sin, and my mother conceived me in sin.
Behold, you love truth that is hidden, and in secret you make wisdom known to me.
Purify me with hyssop, that I may be clean; wash me, that I may be whiter than snow.
Let me hear joy and gladness, that the bones you have crushed may rejoice.
Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.
Create in me, O God, a clean heart, and give me a new and steadfast spirit.
Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore me with your help, and equip me with a willing spirit.
Links
- Precious on SalzUndLicht
A snack to round off
From the whole team at SalzUndLicht: Thank you very much for watching. We wish you a good time and lots of fun painting. God bless you, my friend!
