J. Gordon Anderson - Contemporary Art

I just found about this thing called the " Manga Bible ". For those of you who do not know, Manga is the Japanese word for comic book - so this is a comic book bible. It has quite a following among a certain set of people. Manga uses a type of illustration called anime , which is a very slick looking and stylized. The guy who made this bible (which use the NIV version) is an English artist/designer who is also working on a degree in theology. The bible received rave reviews from none other than ++Rowan Williams (but don't let that stop you from checking it out). They have a few different versions of the bible: a Manga Bible Raw, and a Manga Bible Extreme. Maybe they will develop a manga Book of Common Prayer next! I think this is a great idea, and while anime is not my favorite style of art by any stretch of the imagination, this is, artistically and conceptually, miles above the " Precious Moments " bibles and associated products.

Here is a video of Jackson Pollock painting and giving some commentary on his art and method. Particularly interesting is his statement that a painting has a life of its own.

I have just begun work on a new series: stations of the cross in large oil paintings (more on that later). Out of curiosity, though, I did a search on the internet and found this guy - David O'Connell (1898 - 1976) - who did a very nice version of them for some English church. I have no idea how large they are, but they are quite gorgeous. The site says they are "not everyone's cup of tea". That's probably because most people know nothing about fine art (they don't even really look at it), or how to appreciate an image that is not "immediate", or visually easy to understand (i.e. art fundamentalists). Anyway, this man's work is quite compelling.

Take "brilliance" with a big grain of salt. This is my art "studio". Once I had a big studio in a creepy old factory in Baltimore City, but now that I am a civilized married man, I have been relegated to my "man space"... in this case the garage. It works okay overall, though it's taken near to two years to get used to. An artist's studio, no matter how meager, is a very personal, and sacred space. The only thing I can compare it to for the non-artist is the altar. It is a place where heaven and earth meet, and where our very bodies and souls are united with the divine.