The Mystery of Incarnation
Mixed Media work by Emily Verdoorn
I am a mixed media artist working in Wheaton, Illinois and for a couple of years now I have been exploring themes of place and belonging. I have been specifically interested in what makes places feel like thin spaces--spaces where heaven and earth seem to touch--and what this does to our sense of a depth of belonging or a poignant almost painful sense of longing.
I collect marks, images, textures, patterns, and colors from the world of my everyday experience. Most often these are drawn from the natural world and the interior spaces which surround me. All this informs my two dimensional mixed media work. For me, the very tactile, textured, ordinary things of everyday life often hold the mystery of the incarnation so well. This is what intrigues me as I try to pay attention to heaven breaking into the very stuff of earth: the Breath of Life in the dirt of creation.
Desert (2019):
This came out of a sense of aloneness and dryness for me, I felt that I was desperately seeking company in my contemporaries, but also the fellowship of the cloud of witnesses which are a very real part of our Christian story. The Christians who have gone before us are, in a sense, more alive now because they are living with Christ in Heaven, and this is something I wanted to take comfort in.
Wool Light (2020):
In this little piece I was simply captivated by the beauty of light pooling outside the warmly lit windows of my neighborhood at blue gray dusk. In a way the houses themselves seemed alive and generous, and yet oddly unselfconscious: wrapped up in their own interior life. As I walked by I felt that piercing sadness or longing as an outsider. And yet it was a gracious gift to feel the textures of the outdoor evening and to see the light.
August (2021):
In this piece, I was further exploring the images of houses in my neighborhood lit from the inside at dusk. There is a sense of longing there which I am interested in, but it is the kind of longing which can only be seen and felt from the outside. I think it is related to the longing for the heavenly city and the home and New Eden for which we were made. I also spent some very restorative time in the smells, textures, and even conversations at our local community garden. I did not personally have a plot there, but I would go there to find restoration in growing things. Sometimes I just walked around, but what I really loved was to sit along the periphery of the garden and draw. Some of this piece was made in that garden.