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“God gave humanity the skill to make things beautiful, to make music, to write poems, to make sculpture, to decorate things. The artistic possibilities are there to be actualized, realized by us, and to be given a concrete form. God gave this to humanity and its meaning is exactly in its givenness. It is given by God, has to be done through God, that is, through the talents He gives, in obedience to Him and in love for Him and others. In this way it is offered back to Him.”
Rookmaaker, Art Needs no Justification.
“Because painting is a human creation and as such is the realization of human imagination, it is spiritual; that is, it shows what it is to be human. These things are communicated, for art is also communication. Everything human attests to the human. The human is never something neutral, a void. The painting is loaded with meaning.”
Rookmaaker - Art Needs no Justification.
“Christian art is by no means always religious art, that is, art which deals with religious themes. Consider God the Creator. Is Gods creation totally involved with religious subjects? What about the universe? the birds? The trees? The mountains? What about the bird’s song? And the sound of the wind in the trees?”
Schaeffer - Art and the Bible
“Artists are the ones to create the poems, the songs, the images, the metaphors, the forms that can both express what has been gained in insight, wisdom and direction, and pass them on to others in a positive and incisive way.”
Rookmaaker - Art Needs no Justification
“The artist makes a body of work, and this body of work shows his world view. No one, for example, who understands Michelangelo or Leonardo can look at their work without understanding something of their respective worldviews. Nonetheless, these artists began by making works of art, and then their world views showed through the body of their work. I emphasize the body of an artist’s work because it is impossible for any single painting, for example, to reflect the totality of an artist’s view of reality. But when we see a collection of an artist’s paintings or a series of a poet’s poems or a number of a novelist’s novels, both the outline and some of the details of the artist’s conception of life shine through.
How then should an artist begin to do his work? I would insist that he begin by setting out to make a work of art. He should say to himself, ‘I am going to make a work of art.’ Perspective number one is that a work of art is first of all a work of art.”
Francis Schaeffer - Art and the Bible