This Weekend Edition of Ecstatic features Josh Tiessen
I descend from a holy heritage of Christian martyrs, pastors, and missionaries who dedicated their lives to serving the Lord and ministering to people. I was born in Moscow, Russia to Canadian parents who taught at a Christian university, training young pastors for ministry in a country healing from the brutality of atheistic communism. From as young as I can remember, I believed in God and wrestled with the big questions of life. As I grew older my faith matured, and I sought to follow the way of Jesus with faithfulness.
I developed an artistic flair from the time I could hold a fat crayon in my little hand, spending long hours as a preschooler doing crafts with my Russian nanny. I requested stylish clothes and unusual haircuts—from the colored spiky-do of the early 2000s to the emo side-sweep of the 2010s. While friends bragged about their latest video game conquests on Halo, I quietly studied under a pet portrait artist who helped me stage my first fine art exhibition at the age of eleven. That Easter, instead of a chocolate bunny, I asked for The Passion of the Christ. I guess you could say I was an odd little duck.
My parents were not artists, but I was fortunate to fall down the rabbit hole into the art world by way of the wildlife art scene in Canada. By invitation, I was mentored at fifteen under the world’s most well-known wildlife artist, Robert Bateman. During this mentorship, I studied alongside a few Christian artists, who were some of the kindest and most supportive people I knew. In the following years, I frequently met Jesus-followers at regional art festivals. Throughout the United States at juried gallery shows I met accomplished artists of faith exhibiting traditional representational art.
By my late teens, I had found my own artistic voice and transitioned away from naturalistic wildlife art. I began juxtaposing animals in abandoned ruins, lacing my paintings with stories and symbolism. I called my style “narrative hyper-surrealism.” While my new work was accepted into contemporary avant-garde galleries in New York City, Los Angeles, and Portland, a new observation dawned on me: all the Christians had disappeared.
I have often been perplexed by the reality that though the Bible is chock-full of strange tales of talking snakes, seraphim covered in eyes from wing-to-wing, and dead men coming to life, most of the last century of Christian art is tame, predictable, and palatable. As for music, I wonder if anyone else has grown weary from the proliferation of worship songs with clichés about breaking chains, or the never-ending references to water. It’s easy to poke fun at kitsch-y Thomas Kinkade cottage landscapes and Greg Olsen biblical prints found in your local Christian bookstore. But in a different way, this is also present in the millennial Christian culture, where the creative output is kinfolk-style minimalism with Bible verses overlaying pastel tones. We merely replaced the sentimental with the slick.
I get it. In the hopes of making Christianity ‘seeker sensitive’ we want to present our faith in an accessible way—so we draw on safe themes for art and music, like purpose, freedom, and comfort, which resonate with the largely suburban culture in which our churches are located. The nagging question is: are we being dishonest and doing society a disservice by covering up the “holy weirdness” of our faith?
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