I have long admired the painters amongst us and the art lessons they provide. My Godmother Nola was a painter. Frankly, she was an artist of many talents — painter, wordsmith, dancer. That’s her magnificent tree giving shelter to a young couple on the left. I admired this painting for years, and now it hangs in my entry way, reminding me daily of the many lessons Nola left behind. Art lessons and life lessons.
One of those lessons was this: notice all the beauty of God’s handiwork.
Tears of Gold
Of course, each one of us is God’s handiwork (Ephesians 2:10), and as the ultimate artist, God makes a masterpiece of all our lives. This is a truth that guides Hannah Rose Thomas‘ artwork. I had the very good fortune of spending an afternoon with this young British artist and human rights activist a few weeks back. Hannah is trained in the early Renaissance and iconography style. Those are two of her portraits above, next to Nola’s tree.
Hannah has climbed deep into the pain and sadness of some of the world’s most desperate women, listening to their stories and helping them process traumatic memories, heal, and rediscover a sense of self-worth and dignity. She has conducted art workshops with survivors of rape, religious persecution and genocide in Jordan, Iraqi Kurdistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Romania.
“Art is a way to express that which we cannot find words to express,” she says. Hannah has recently released a collection of her portraits in a volume titled, Tears of Gold from Plough Publishing. It includes a foreword written by His Majesty King Charles III.
Resilience and Restoration
Talking with Hannah reminded me of Leora Raikin, the energetic woman who heads up the David Labkovski Project (DLP) in Los Angeles. David Labkovski was Leora’s great uncle and a prolific 20th century painter whose artwork tells the story of life in Eastern Europe before, during, and after the Holocaust.
I reached out to Leora for a late-night Zoom chat to talk about David’s body of work. While studying at the Art Academy of Leningrad in the late 1930s, David had escaped the fate of family members and friends back home in Vilna. There, Nazis murdered tens of thousands of Jews in the early days of World War II. Instead, David was forced into service with the Red Army, then accused of anti-Soviet activity that landed him in a Siberian Gulag for several years.
Read the long-form version of this post at The Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation and Culture
In God’s Image: Art Lessons
His paintings are a visual diary of the horrors of the Holocaust and the human degradation of the labor camps. But his artwork was also his therapy. In his later years, David’s artwork returned to the more carefree style of his youth. The final picture on the right is David and wife Rivka on their terrace in Israel.
Dig Deeper
After my encounters with Hanna and Leora, I wondered: Where do we see beauty? Is it reserved only for bright happy encounters? Or is there space to recognize beauty even in the dark and difficult moments. I believe I know what Nola, Hannah and David would have to say on the matter.
I’ve written a long-form article on this topic for The Washington Institute of Faith, Vocation and Culture. It explores the work of Hannah and David in greater detail. It uncovers valuable art lessons about restoration, self-worth and human dignity. Click on the link to read the full article: The Image of God: Art Lessons.