Beauty Refresher: Gina Hurry

Gina is an artist who helps me remember Heaven is coming. Through her life and art she helps me have the courage to long for more, love deeply, weep often, and risk much in this short life we have. Besides her beautiful paintings, she has just published The Beloved City, an invitation to awaken our holy imagination, in the “mess” of our daily lives and layers.

She writes, “When I started noticing the beauty of my dropcloths underneath my finished paintings, I began to see the layers and colors my daily life and work had left behind and underfoot as a treasure. The dropcloths began to represent to me vulnerability, community, and being held in a bigger story.”

Gina and I journey together in helping to encourage and sustain Birmingham-area artists, pastors, and city visionaries through InSpero. Beauty matters and so do those who create it.

Order her book here. Check out her website, instagram and Facebook.

Beauty Refresher: Amy Grimes, StoryPainting

It's my joy that one of my favorite artists, Amy Grimes, is also a friend and neighbor. To take a walk with her is to enter a more hopeful and magical world and see things differently.

Here is Amy's description for the painting above:

It's titled “Home” and it’s about entering into the total restoration of all things. Can you imagine? Where all darkness is left behind. It reminds me of the words at the end of C.S. Lewis’s story, The Last Battle, where he says, “All their life in this world and all their adventures had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

This print (and three more that are meant to accompany it) tell the story of Creation, The Fall, Redemption, and Restoration. These are some of my favorite paintings I’ve ever had the joy to dream up and create. I was intimidated by the task, and I painted them slowly, but I’m so thankful for every minute I got to spend creating them. 

Follow her on Instagram (trust me, you want to!) and explore her website for her books as well as her painting and prints. We need more Amys in these hard times.   

Beauty Refresher: Kerry Leasure, Redeeming Found Objects

Are you trying to find ways to smile this year? Follow Here a Chick, There a Chick on Instagram. Kerry Leasure is an Alabama artist creating mixed media jewelry from antiques, found objects, and a healthy sense of humor. Through whimsy, creativity and pure fun, she helps me regain perspective and some spunk for these days. After months of wandering around in yoga pants with no makeup or jewelry (not a pretty picture), her work makes me realize it's time to accessorize my "casual wear" with more than just a mask! Check out her work here.  I think that necklace is my new “theme.” Living in the questions.

I love this quote from one of Kerry's posts: “Half the joy in life is in little things taken on the run—let us run if we must—but let us keep our hearts young and our eyes open that nothing worth our while should escape us.” – Victor Cherbuliez

Introducing New Series: Beauty Refresher.

Now more than ever, we need hope. "A Beauty Refresher" is a window into the world of touching and tasting, smelling and sensing, seeing and reading and hearing hope through artists.

Most of these artists I’ve had the joy of meeting and knowing through InSpero. A few others, like Charles Mackesy, from England, help me remember what’s most important. He’s a gentle voice in these loud times. I’ll provide links to their websites or social media accounts so you can explore and be refreshed as well.

Why focus on beauty in these hard days? Because in a broken world, beauty hints of Heaven and the hope of what can be. 

He has made everything beautiful in its time . . . . he has put eternity into man's heart. Ecclesiastes 3

You can also scroll to the bottom of my website and click on Beauty Refresher to find more artists.