Worship Painting at Karitos Charleston with Vivien Hibbert

"Open The Ancient Doors"

Mixed Media

16x20"

SOLD

We had a great worship arts weekend at KaritosCharleston WorshipArts last weekend.  Above is my painting from Friday evening - lots of collage and texture in this piece, including part of "Joy to the World" from an old hymnal.

St. Johns Parish on Johns Island hosted the weekend - they have a fabulous contemporary parish hall space which easily converts to an contemporary worship space.  It was great to see the parish hall named after one of my favorite people and priests, Charlie Walton.  

Vivien is an amazing woman of God - musician, worship leader, teacher and speaker.  I heard her several years ago when I painted at Karitos in Chicago (the parent organization) so it was a real honor to be asked to come to this conference and paint during the worship services.  

The conference had a wonderful crowd throughout and represented were worship leaders, musicians, singers, artists, poets, writers and dancers.  Vivien taught us the importance of everything working together in a worship service to  - we're familiar with the collaboration of music and word/preaching on Sundays - the songs reinforce the scriptures and the theme for that day.  But Vivien brought it to a whole new level and taught us how we can bring it all together through the Holy Spirit and explain it to a congregation that's not familiar with some of more creative worship forms that can be used to reinforce what God is saying in very powerful and surprising ways - and when everything works together, everyone "gets the message".  For instance, we started with a piece of worship art - the dancers were asked to interpret the art through dance, then the group was asked if anyone had a scripture or a poem that interpreted the piece of art (I was stunned at the poetry and prose, inspired and written within minutes) and then the songs came with singers spontaneously singing interpretations.  Then we started all over again but from a different starting point, like a dance or a poem, and even with a different theme, it was amazing to see the how the worship art just fit right in, and the dance and the spontaneous music - when the Holy Spirit moves, it's incredible how your eyes are opened and your spirit expands to receive his revelation.  What a gift to have been part of this conference and I look so forward to the next KaritosCharleston conference!