“Realism or Impressionism?”

How about BOTH? In this next installment of my blog series “Spiritual Painting and Technique” (see previous: Post 1 “Give and Take Away“, Post 2 “From the Inside Out“, Post 3 “Gimmick or Honest?“) I’ll share my painting style that combines both realism and impressionism into the same composition. Then I’ll wrap up with a spiritual metaphor about how life is about facts and logic, as well as abstract concepts like faith.

This series of paintings (above photo), used as illustrations for children’s book “Bird Days”, is a good example of merging realism with impressionism. Let’s take a closer look at my cardinals painting first:

In the above painting of a pair of cardinals in a tree, the birds themselves are detailed and true to life, painted with precision and small brush strokes, based on the factual anatomy of the birds: realism. Whereas the tree is painted with loose, big, strokes that are easily seen when observing the painting, carrying more emotion than detail: impressionism. Both realism and impressionism originated with artists painting everyday life situations, and modern day artists like me carry on that tradition to this day. Birds in trees is a common sight.

How everyday life is applied to canvas comes down to style. Impressionism often focuses on the highlights, movement, and energy of a subject, whereas realism is usually flatter and more subdued. The combination of the two is a good example of the duality of life, which is also a common part of everyday living. Life is about opposing themes, such as life and death, happiness and grief, peace and turmoil, order and chaos.

You can observe the same method of combining realism and impressionism in the above image of my painting of a hummingbird. Notice how the bird is realistically detailed while the landscape is impressionistic. The hummingbird almost looks like a nature drawing to illustrate a book about bird facts, whereas the parts depicting the flowers and grass are heavily textured and so loosely represented that we can’t even tell what type of flowers they are.

In this last example, the bluebird contains many more details than the surrounding landscape. The impressionism style focuses on the rolling highlights of the grasses, making it look like the grass is moving like waves of the ocean. The purples and reds of the vegetation behind the grass look different in texture, an illusion created by variations in color and by alternating different brush strokes. There is a contrasting energy between the quiet bird who looks lost in thought and the active landscape around him.

Now we’re at the point in the blog post where we ponder my painting technique as a spiritual metaphor. Imagine your life as a pair of parallel train tracks, with one train going one direction and the other going the opposite way. At times the trains are moving at the same speed, other times not. Sometimes one train is going a farther distance from the other. Let’s now imagine that the trains are sometimes synced to move in the same direction alongside each other, and in a few rare occasions it seems as if the two trains are moving at the same speed, headed to the same destination, perfectly in time with each other.

I like the train metaphor and I think of it often, assigning different symbolic meanings to the trains depending on the conversation. For this blog post, the trains represent our logical, factual, “realism” side of life on one track and our emotional, spiritual, “impressionistic” side of life on the other. Sometimes these two aspects of our lives move far away from each other in what may feel like a hopeless disconnect. We may see our reality train and our faith train traveling in opposite directions, faster and faster, further and further apart. Other times we may feel as if our reality and faith are in perfect alignment, traveling in the same direction at the same time.

We can think of my painting style as a similar metaphor. Reality and faith, rather than trains on a track, are represented as realism and impressionism, colors, brush strokes, details or lack thereof, movement, and composition. It’s well with our soul when our life’s canvas is a peaceful balance of both the logical and the spiritual. For without clear eyes about what is, we don’t see truth. But without hope, we cannot handle the truth that we can plainly see, nor can we believe in the truth that we can’t see without faith.

Without logic, we can’t justify faith, as there is no reality to validate it with. And yet without faith, there is no justification of truth, as there is no validation of it as having any substance, any meaning. Realism without spiritualism is a bit like the philosophical question about a tree falling down in the woods. If no one is around to hear it go down, does it make noise? Facts without interpretation are a soundless tree, or a tree whose noise doesn’t matter.

Beyond the dynamic of logic and faith, my paintings carry personal spiritual significance that combines the realistic portrayal of an actual bird with the concept of what a bird might mean to us individually and spiritually. Here is an excerpt that I wrote about my cardinal painting from my book “50 Oil Paintings Inspired by my Christian Faith”:

“Cardinals have a special meaning for me that relates to my dad. Dad died from cancer at age thirty-seven. My grandmother was convinced that he visited her as a cardinal. At the time, this was an out-there idea for Mom and I to believe in, but a pattern of cardinal sightings began to emerge. Especially during milestones or other significant days of high emotion, a cardinal would appear seemingly out of nowhere. I began to think of cardinal sightings as Dad letting me know he sees our joys and pain. His spirit lives on, and love is forever. I hear from many people that they too have experienced a spiritual connection with cardinals that brings comfort and peace, relating to the loss of a loved one.”

Revelation 21:4
“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

Of note is the part where I mention “I hear from many people that they too have experienced a spiritual connection with cardinals…” In this way the realism (a recognizable realistic bird) impacts the spiritual (how people feel about the bird). This takes us to a deeper level from the painting techniques of realism and impressionism, and brings us to the actual real paint on the canvas combined with the thoughts, feelings, and impressions of the person viewing the painting. And if people share their impressions with me, we move beyond the canvas and are now engaged beyond the painting, beyond the paints.

So when we bring this to a level beyond the painting style, realism refers to the paint itself and impressionism is the impact the painting has on the viewer. That’s not a standard definition for realism or impressionism, but I hope that looking at those familiar terms in a different way has been interesting for you, perhaps even healing. We are complicated beings, we humans. Even when the world is chaotic, our reality train and our faith train don’t stay far apart forever. Take heart and stay strong. The trains will align again in time. Or imagine my bird paintings- reality and faith exist on the same canvas. One doesn’t cancel the other, both are powerful and beautiful. We see many of the same things as we journey through life together.

God bless you and keep you, and give you peace.