Painting Prayer: Why Faith Needs Art And

Advance Praise and Reviews "Both memoir and manifesto, Painting Prayer reveals how authentic creative work can emerge not from sidestepping tradition and theological complexity, but from engaging it--knowing that what emerges will be beautifully complex, necessarily fraught, and often transformative. Contemporary artist Alfonse Borysewicz's book is a vital contribution to contemporary discussions of faith and art."--James Martin, SJ, author, Jesus: A Pilgrimage When you enter a house of worship, what are you hoping to experience? Probably something like transcendence--a feeling of being taken out of your everyday existence to experience something profound, something beyond your usual life. When you look at art, what are you hoping to experience? Probably something similar. Good art can do that: it can lift you out of your circumstances. It can make you think. It can move you. Both a spiritual resource for thoughtful Christians and creatives, and a meditation on the relationship between faith and the arts, in this book artist Alfonse Borysewicz explores the complex relationship between art's push against boundaries and the church's respect for the boundedness of faith, tradition, and theology. In a freshness of approach and voice, Borysewicz showing how creative experience can benefit people of faith and how timeless faith offers much to creative expression. Drawing on theologians, philosophers, novelists, and fellow artists, Borysewicz reflects on faith itself in a messy world offering limited certainty.