Religious Paintings

By Stephanie Snyder

A major discussion piece in this class dealt with religious paintings in primal cultures. Alot of our readings and our discussion essays included the art that primal people painted on walls and invested a great part of their lives in.

My favorite aspect of religious paintings dealt with the process in which they were done. I loved the contrast between the idea of art and painting from what modern day literate culture perceives art as as opposed to how the oral primal cultures of the past did.

The oral, primal cultures valued the process. In the film of the Austrailia Twighlight Dreamtime, there was a man who gathered the supplies for his art as a ritual. The bark he cut off the tree was carefully chosen and removed and prepared.

He meditated as he made the paint and mixed together the color. As he prepped the bark canvas, he carefully connected to his thoughts and how and what he was going to paint. The time that he took to paint was a great deal of time which showed his care for what he was doing.

More importantly, I appreciated how he communed with the spiritual as he painted his work. His painting was much less about the end result moreso than the time and process of creating it. He showed appreciation for what he was doing and the importance of the act of painting, connecting with the Divine.