The Artistic Vision
Cultivating a Sacramental Imagination for Creative Practice
- Arts & Literature
- Publisher: Cascade Books (Wipf and Stock)
- Published: 2024
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Publisher's Description
When you look at the world, what do you see? As an artist, your creativity stems from your vision. The problem in the modern world is how often one's imagination is fragmented and reduced--between worship and work, the body and soul, the material and the spiritual. Written to practicing artists and those who pastor them, The Artistic Vision encourages artists who long for a greater sense of purpose and a greater sense of wholeness, proposing that seeing the material world as a shadow of spiritual realities will lead them toward an expression that joins faith and practice. Drawing from the Oxford Movement and artistic examples like Christina Rosetti and Flannery O'Connor, Ball and Sosler present a sacramental way of seeing the world: the invisible through the visible, the spiritual through the material, the divine through creation. Interspersed with practical vignettes from artists and pastoral reflection, The Artistic Vision helps artists regain an enchanted, mysterious, and reverent vision of life. Artists neither have to check their faith at the studio door, nor produce kitschy or easy art. By creating with a sacramental vision, they are seeing the world "charged with the grandeur of God" and inviting viewers into that participation.
Endorsements (2)
“The sacramental imagination proposed by Alex Sosler and Gary Ball is nothing less than a way of being in the world that recognizes divine presence in created things. Rejecting modern rationalist and spiritualist approaches to the arts, The Artistic Vision aims to rejoin earthly and spiritual realities. While notably inspired by the Oxford Movement—particularly the poet Christina Rosetti—Ball and Sosler have drunk deeply from the entire well of the church’s Great Tradition. Those struggling with questions regarding faith and the arts find in this book a faithful and inspiring guide to the beauty of mystery.”
“Both theologically astute and grounded in the bloody, toiling, tear-inducing, sweaty work of practicing artists, this book presents readers with an integrated vision of art and faith that is sorely needed in a world that prefers to keep such matters separated and separable. Rooted in a sacramental vision and keenly attuned to the God who meets us in the very flesh of Christ, The Artistic Vision represents a beautiful gift not just to artists and creatives, but also to teachers, pastors, and ministers of the faith.”
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