What I discovered while painting lament.....
In August, 2025, I met a friend who is doing her doctoral thesis on 9 pure form, individual lament Psalms. There are 39 individual lament psalms in the book of Psalms, 9 are a pure format, others are either incomplete or mixed. The pure format consists of:
1.Turning to God
2.Description of the complaint
3.Confession of trust in God
4.Petition
5.Doxology or vow of praise
I felt a desire to explore these 9 individual lament Psalms for myself and see if I could express my complaints or lament to God with a trust that my faith in God as my only hope would turn into praise even though my problems wouldn’t all be solved. The prayer was the time spent talking to God and then listening for colors that would start with God, and then progress to my feelings of lament.
In the process that started in January of 2026, I started with the first set of 3 Psalms, and collaged a layer hymns from an old hymnal, since the Psalms were meant to be sung.
These are the order of the different layers:
1st set, #5,13,22-layer of gesso, layer of hymns, layer of acrylic ink, acrylic paint
2nd set, #26,27,54—layer of hymns, layer of gesso, layer of acrylic ink, acrylic paint
3rd set, #56,140,142-Layer of gesso, layer of hymns, another layer of gesso, acrylic ink, paint
After getting the basic layers on the canvas, I listened for colors that came to mind for each Psalm. I always started first with the light colors which symbolized God to me. Just as the Psalm, I started with God and would end with God. Your eye will naturally find the light first, notice the dark places and then try to find the light again, returning to God. “The enemy wants you to believe that you can’t return home. That’s a lie. He is the one who can’t return home. You can.” The Eden Option
The next colors were the darks symbolizing my feelings at that particular moment. I didn’t want to waste energy regretting the way things were or what might have been, but started from an acceptance of where things stood exactly as they are and to search for my way in the midst of those circumstances. I had to keep the light in order to find my way back to God.
“What is it like to be awake to God’s glorious presence even in the midst of suffering? He understands how we are totally overwhelmed and exhausted by it all…the call to lament and the call to celebrate…the fear of death and the fear of hope. We are so utterly human…Not what I will.. but what you will.. let us be going.” Stacie Poston—Adjunct Biola University
In the midst of this project, I started a study of the Holy Spirit in the book by Tyler Patton, A Familiar Stranger. We were discovering the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament and the New Testament and picking out descriptive names from those scriptures for an upcoming summer community Bible study. We were going to use different symbols for the different names, but God brought these two projects together. With the paintings all at a certain stage, I discovered that each name of the Holy Spirit fit one of the paintings. God named the paintings before they were even finished as well as finding the Holy Spirit present in each Psalm!
Madeline Engle said, “Art portrays chaos but it must also reflect some of the cosmos.” Cosmos is order out of chaos. After sitting in the chaos of lament, God was bringing order out of the chaos of my art by naming my paintings before they were even finished and giving them direction and deeper awareness of the Holy Spirit’s presence. What if the Holy Spirit can use our creativity to define our reality and then help us see it in a different way? He taught me that “a faith that moves mountains is a faith that expands horizons. It does not bring us into a smaller world full of easy answers, but into a larger one where there is room for wonder!”-Rich Mullins
We are created in God’s image. We were created by the creator to be creative worshippers. Worship happens when we sense the presence of God. Those moments should be remembered in paintings, poetry, dance, song, sculptures, pottery.
These paintings are remembered moments spent in God’s presence, lamenting, trying to figure life out and finding my way back to God in the end. Each one is a unique time of moments of worship.
All artists are storytellers. This is a piece of God’s story with me…
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