Asheville has been a nurturing community for artist Grace (Carol) Bomer.
An arts review in the Asheville Citizen-Times once called her work “a silent form of poetry.” Thirty years later, Carol’s paintings are still a silent form of poetry suggesting metaphors that allude to the extravagant mystery of God’s grace.
Poetry from Michael O’Brien’s novel, Island of the World, inspired the image featured on this month’s cover. The image, entitled One Who Came On the Waters of Time II, is about a grace story that is transcendent and eternal. The painting encapsulates her desire to fathom this grace that surrounds us and her desire to be washed in words and images that proclaim beauty and truth.
Beneath The Waves
To you, the one who came on the waters of time,
like a swimmer,
you passed in front of my eyes at the very
moment
when hope was sinking low…
The work is part of the Vessel Series, which focuses on journey and pilgrimage. We are vessels, voyagers, and seamen. The journey of life is sacramental (i.e. sacred) in that we are vessels created in the image of God to proclaim His glory. We have an insatiable longing for worship and the spiritual because we are created to worship – to “give worth to” – God who created us. If we do not worship God, we will worship something or someone. The spiritual world is as real as the material world and we long to apprehend and see it. This is where the artist comes in.
Federico Fellini, one of the most influential filmmakers of the 20th century, said, “What is an artist? A provincial who finds himself somewhere between a physical reality and a metaphysical one… It’s this in-between that I’m calling a province, this frontier country between the tangible world and the intangible one which is really the realm of the artist.”
An artist makes visible the invisible. Or another way to say it, the artist makes pictures of, or “gives flesh to,” ideas and words, and to realities both seen and unseen. Art is incarnational. It puts flesh on spiritual and unseen things.
Grace Bomer’s art is incarnational. She longs to “speak” God’s story into the world in a way that takes seriously the grace of a Creator who chose not merely to create but to interact with that creation, to engage with humanity in nothing less than the beauty and mess of human-form himself.
This is the truth of the Incarnation. The God-man, Jesus, entered time and space. “The Word became flesh and lived among us,” and we have seen his glory” (John 1). He came to give life to spiritual corpses. He makes visible the invisible, “and he holds all things together by the Word of his power.” He is Word and image. Our human condition is broken and separated from God – our words and images are manipulated for power. But grace is possible!
Grace’s painting, Voyagers, has been selected for a soon-to-be-published North Light book on cold wax painting by Serena Barton.
Grace works at a studio in Asheville’s River District at 140 D Roberts Street. When she has time, she teaches oil and cold wax workshops. Carol has shown nationally and internationally—from the Asheville Art Museum to the Karas Gallery in Kiev, Ukraine.
In 2003, she taught and spoke at Luxan Academy of Fine Art in Shenyang, China. Her work is currently traveling in Spain with Arte-FE.
If You Go: Works by Grace Carol Bomer are on display through August 28, 2014 at Andrew Charles Gallery at Reynolds Village, 60 North Merrimon, Suite 105, N. Asheville. Call (828) 989-0111 for details.
