Painting Prayer: Why Faith Needs Art - and Art Needs Faith

Name: Painting Prayer: Why Faith Needs Art - and Art Needs Faith
Brand: Orbis Books
SKU: 978-1-62698-648-0
Price: 30.00 USD
Availability: InStock

Painting Prayer: Why Faith Needs Art - and Art Needs Faith

Author:Alfonse Borysewicz

Binding: Paperback

ISBN: 9781626986480

Page Count: 168

$30.00 USD

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SKU:978-1-62698-648-0

⭐Advance Praise and Reviews⭐

“Both memoir and manifesto, Painting Prayer reveals how authentic creative work can emerge not from sidestepping tradition and theological complexity, but from engaging it—knowing that what emerges will be beautifully complex, necessarily fraught, and often transformative. Contemporary artist Alfonse Borysewicz's book is a vital contribution to contemporary discussions of faith and art."—James Martin, SJ, author, Jesus: A Pilgrimage

“There simply isn’t another voice today with the moral insight, theological acumen, and years in the art world to speak with clarify and compassion about the future of art and faith.” —Taylor Worley, author, Memento Mori in Contemporary Art: Theologies of Lament and Hope

“I loved this book because it took me by surprise. I’d never encountered such an experimental, emotional, and yet still intellectual, invitation to see art as an essential aspect of everyday life. And as a kind of faith.” - Jon M.Sweeney, Spirituality and Prayer

When you enter a house of worship, what are you hoping to experience? Probably something like transcendence—a feeling of being taken out of your everyday existence to experience something profound, something beyond your usual life. When you look at art, what are you hoping to experience? Probably something similar. Good art can do that: it can lift you out of your circumstances. It can make you think. It can move you.

Both a spiritual resource for thoughtful Christians and creatives, and a meditation on the relationship between faith and the arts, in this book artist Alfonse Borysewicz explores the complex relationship between art’s push against boundaries and the church’s respect for the boundedness of faith, tradition, and theology. In a freshness of approach and voice, Borysewicz showing how creative experience can benefit people of faith and how timeless faith offers much to creative expression. Drawing on theologians, philosophers, novelists, and fellow artists, Borysewicz reflects on faith itself in a messy world offering limited certainty.

Alfonse Borysewicz is a Brooklyn-based painter. A Detroit native, he has a BA from Sacred Heart Seminary and an MA from St. John's Provincial Seminary. He attended the Studio School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA and is a recipient of two Pollock-Krasner Foundation fellowships (1987, 1992), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1995), and Templeton Religion Trust grant. His work has been featured in The New York Times and Art in America. This is his first book.