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BODY OF CHRIST at THE DADIAN GALLERY at WESLEY THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY Maria Mijares, "Veneration"
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Last | Thumbnails  Veneration,
2001acrylic on canvas. Forty paintings fill my studio at varying degrees of completion representing a two-decade focus on the Catholic priesthood. This work forms a visual outline for yet unfolding stories— shaped and played out “By the Mystery of Faith.” I began on a pilgrimage to explore the parallel of the mystic art-life to the priesthood and the relationship of artist to subject, and subject to audience. Going ‘Behind the Seens’ to a reality stretched to the edge— just short of falling off-, I encompass beyond. I stoke the source to discover deeper mysteries from the fire within. In the caves of my ancestral Altamira, the artist was the priest. Art is sacred. My paintings are iconographic. Each mark of paint is deliberated, deliberate, and finally, poetic. As every grain of sand makes up a beach, details create the whole picture. Revelation comes with the clarity of a well-examined truth, illuminated by the facets of each inquiry. As I work, I ask myself two questions, ‘Is it true? Is it beautiful?’ Once I have accomplished the representational reality, I hunt for poetic abstractions within what is true. Looking for beauty, I find it equally among the ordinary, because I know that every random moment contains all the elements for perfect harmony. I work to arrive at the painted marks that will reflect an intuitive truth, as the tile patterns of the Alhambra represent mathematical theorems. After willy-nilly confetti of experience, paint orders a complex mesh of inherent paradox. Order reverberates. I observe the power. While reflecting culture, I recognize the power of Art as catalyst, as responsibility, and as an act of creating culture. All that goes into the painting’s creation—the layering of experience, feeling, and knowledge, the deciphering of lived metaphors, and formal activity—is ultimately transparent and accessible. Visual context becomes philosophy, and then, theory gives way to faith.
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