Creativity is a Form of Love

One perspective of personal transformation that takes place through arts practice, is from the Christian tradition, best expressed by the ideas of counselor, John Sanford.

“Creativity is the expression of God’s love, one of the greatest gifts humans possess” (Sanford, 1970, p. 158). When we are in contact with the inner world, we can expereince the opening of the heart where the treasures of the Kingdom of God become available. Human beings are creations crafted and formed into the image of God. When we create, there is the possiblity to enter into this sacred presence of the Infinite; we lose our sense of time and space, and slip into a state of expanded consciousness. In this expereince our heart and unconscious parts of self shift and surface into expression. Sometimes this comes as a disruptive earthquake that shake our foundations, moving boulders of limitations aside to make room for new growth and maturity.

From this perspective, self-inquiry through the process if painting is about the birthing of a new personality. In a psychological sense, the expereince of creativity through artmaking represents the end of an old order and the establishment of a new way of being in the world. The creative contents of the inner world begin to overthrow the previous organization of the personality, opening to the coming of the Kingdom of God within us. At the heart of the birth of this new person is “the complete human being”, the consciousness of Christ within ourselves- the union of our total personality.

For where your treasure is, there is your heart (Matt.6:21).

Inspired and adapted from the Chapter “The Coming of the Kingdom of God” in John Sandford’s book, The Kingdom Within (1970).