The minimalist approach in After the Fire A Still Small Voice heeds the pseudo-proverb, "One picture is worth a thousand words," and the advice, attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, "Preach the Gospel. If necessary, use words."
Selected quotations are from the authorized King James Bible. The challenge was for the author to write, and then for the artist to sketch, their respective inspirations. The pattern was to select a quotation, compose a meditation, and then ask the artist to create a drawing to add still other voices to the ancient, and yet, contemporary story of human encounter with the divine from beginnings to future hope. The creative interface between the poems and the abstract-expressionist charcoal drawings is devised to complement one another.
The astute reader will discern thematic development from ancient Hebrew texts to C.E. accounts of causation, dynamic settings, particularities of time and place, emotional struggle, maturation, and insight hidden in the paradoxical shadow world of the perennial divine mystery. Light and dark are juxtaposed to produce dynamic tension. What is implied is as important as what is explicit. Imaginative projection, connotative values, and non-traditional creative interpretation are keys to expanded transformative understanding.
The observant art aficionado will see in the Abstract Expressionist charcoal sketches little of representative reality. Instead, the artist created from swirls, dark specks (voices?), vertical horizontal circular energy, emotive forces, light source, silhouetted figures, womb-like contours, explosions of presence and absence, intensity, the chalice viewed Daliesque from above, disregard for convention, and tendered security in the eternal sway between the earth-bound and the transcendental. ---from the Foreword by the author
Sheldon H. Clark, D. Min. has lived and worked in the United States of America, India, and Canada. He graduated from Westtown School, '59, and holds a B.A. (English) from Hiram College, Ohio (1964) and two degrees from the University of Toronto (Drama, 1970, and a B.Ed. 1971). He settled on a career as an English and Drama teacher, and eventually became the Headmaster of Pickering College, Newmarket, Ontario (1972-1995). Subsequently, he earned an M. Div. from the Earlham School of Religion, Richmond, Indiana (1999) and a D. Min. from Anderson University School of Theology, Anderson, Indiana (2003). He became a second career pastor who served several congregations in Indiana, where also he served as a hospital and prison chaplain. He has a married daughter and one grandson. He is a widower, retired, and lives in Ancaster, Ontario.
Catherine Farquhar, AOCAD, graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) in 2000. Her focus was on drawing and painting. She has been influenced by Romanticism, in particular the works of J.M.W. Turner (English painter, 1775-1851). After graduation she began teaching Visual Arts at Pickering College, Newmarket, Ontario (2000-2015). Today, she continues to teach and create her own artworks in her private studio. She includes elements of nature, light, and atmosphere, while maintaining the romantic ideal of evoking thought and emotion in her work.
