When I paint, I make a mess
When I paint, I make a mess. I am totally into it. I often work fast, watching the results emerge on the paper or canvas. It feels like a dance as I respond to what’s happening with the interacting colours or the washes of paint moving across a wet canvas. I watch and see, then decide to move with it or change direction. There’s a vision I’m working towards, but I’m open to surprises as to how that vision gets realised.
Art is a way of seeing. I am an artist and sometimes I express this in paint. I am also a Christian. My paintings seek to capture a moment of awareness; perhaps it is in a landscape, or perhaps an inspiration in prayer. I work in the rich textures of colour through layers of pastel or acrylic and oil washes. I seek to see nature with the awareness of the Creator God who has revealed himself to us.
My painting is successful when it stirs awareness in the viewer; an intangible excitement, a consciousness of beauty, the surprise of a discovered possibility. This is the joy of the creative process that I seek to express in life. This is the message I hope to communicate through my painting.
What's going on in these paintings?
“Paint the meaning beyond the scene, give expression to a God-given vision”
– Andreas Felger, contemporary German artist
|
Jamie Treadwell is a member of a Christian community movement called the Sword of the Spirit and its missionary brotherhood, the Servants of the Word. He is Founder Director of Jamie Treadwell Coaching, and works internationally as a coach in personal life and corporate and executive performance.
Jamie holds a BFA Honours from the University of Michigan School of Art and is a member of the Irish Pastel Society. His works are in private collections around the world.
|
|
What’s going on in these paintings? A simple answer is that I’m having fun. But it’s also about a process of discovery.
Discovery about the subject I am painting – what gives it significance, beauty, and interest. I often paint in a series and within a particular series there is a simplification and then amplification of key elements that capture my interest, for example the interplay of light, rain, and mountain ridges in the Alaska series, or the patterns of the sea and coast line in the Devon series. A series often moves from representational studies and sketches into abstraction.
The discovery is also about the process of painting itself. Sometimes it feels like a wrestling match with the paint (or a dance when it's going well). Washes take on a life of their own and wander across the canvas. A particular use of colour or texture brings a surprise result - sometimes a good one. I must be aware not only of the vision I seek to communicate, but also what is being revealed within the process of the painting. Nothing is wasted, and along the way I’m making decisions as though in the midst of white water rafting. I want my paintings to communicate something about the spontaneity of the process itself.
My art work has always been alongside of my personal development work with individuals and groups. The link between these is in the creative process itself, and the importance of awareness. Awareness opens possibility. Possibility releases potential. I seek to find potential in people as well as ideas. I work in the rich textures of colour through layers of pastel or washes in acrylic and oil. Our lives are full of possibilities, and I use artistic expression as an analogous expression of possibility.
Finding time to paint
The art work on this website has been created during the time I have been launching youth ministry projects throughout Europe and the Middle East. My painting and photography have been like a stream of creativity that has run alongside of my ministry through these years. When I found some time in an evening, a day off, or a few days of holiday, I would wade into the creative stream and release paint into the vision that was stirring at that point in my journey. |
