The Self-Forgetful Artist
This summer Poiema Visual Arts will be holding its second biennial art conference, “Pieces: Beauty in Brokenness” in York, Pennsylvania. As we prepare for this exciting event, we want to introduce you to some of the unique individuals who will be presenting this year. Our speakers bring together a rich mix of experiences that we know will encourage and challenge all who attend.
In this post, we are privileged to introduce you to Jeff McRobbie! Jeff will be presenting a breakout sessions at our conference titled “Love Your City With Your Art.” We invite you to lean in for some sage advice as you prepare to gather with other creatives; brothers and sisters who are also growing more like Jesus day-by-day.
Having a particularly sensitive ego is certainly not the result of my being an artist. Still, not surprisingly, it does have a dampening impact on my courage as an artist. What if I can’t execute the idea in my imagination? What if other artists do something similar, but better? Why am I devastated by critique, and bothered by silence about my work? What if I can’t produce something good enough to justify calling myself ‘an artist’? In a room full of artists, how do I measure up?
It probably doesn’t help that I have acquired a sort of “magical looking glass” to aid me in assessing the value of my artistic efforts compared to that of all the other artists of the land. Like the famed mirror of the fairy tale queen, an enchanted social media advises me how others might see me, confirming insecure convictions that I am either under-rated or perhaps truly an impostor. It’s all about me, really.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve come to realize that living with "me" at the center of all my thoughts is both exhausting and paralyzing. It is exhausting, because there is no amount of work I can do to feel as if I finally measure up. I’ll always fall short. I’ll always end up feeling that I am “not enough” by the world’s standards or that my own carefully lowered standards expose me as a hack. It is paralyzing because sometimes I can’t move towards courageously making art … or towards truly enjoying other people’s art-making. But I can’t seem to change! Who will rescue me?
The Gospel of grace offers me a way out of these joy-stealing patterns of easily bruised pride and crippling fear of man. I am learning, little-by-little, to preach to my heart something similar to what church-planter and professor Jack Miller daily preached to his own heart: “Cheer up, you’re far more sinful and broken than you could ever know! But cheer up! You are more forgiven, loved, and accepted in Christ than you could ever hope to imagine!” The weight of this reality is beginning to free me and move me forward.
I have also found the Apostle Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 4:1-4 to be a practical example of what the Gospel should look like in my life as an artist:
This, then, is how you ought to regard us: as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the mysteries God has revealed. Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful. I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me.
As artists, we have been entrusted with the work of making visible the mysteries that God has revealed. It takes creativity to bring into being – out of common materials – that which is full of uncommon weight and power. God invites us to collaborate with Him by engaging the imaginations of others and inviting them to consider the possibility of a new and better story. Hope, Romans 8:24 tells us, is not based on what we see or have, but on what God has said is real and true. So the first work of the artist, if we are to serve well in our calling, is the believing work of faith. And the work of “proving faithful” is literally our daily clinging to Christ for our identity and courage.
Timothy Keller, in his little book, The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness contrasts the world’s flawed counsel on “self-esteem” with Paul’s “Gospel esteem.” Keller says that Paul’s radical viewpoint is the only real solution for our propensity to measure ourselves on the verdicts of others, or even of ourselves. There’s a lesson here for artists. Keller offers a picture from C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity, “The thing we would remember from meeting a truly gospel-humble person is how much they seemed to be totally interested in us. Because the essence of gospel-humility is not thinking more of myself or thinking less of myself, it is thinking of myself less.”
Keller writes, “[Paul] is saying he knows about his sins, but he doesn’t connect them to himself and his identity. His sins and his identity are not connected. He refuses to play that game. He does not see a sin and let it destroy his sense of identity. He will not make a connection. Neither does he see an accomplishment and congratulate himself. He sees all kinds of sins in himself, and all kinds of accomplishments too, but he refuses to connect them with himself or his identity. So although he knows himself to be the chief of sinners, that fact is not going to stop him from doing the things that he is called [entrusted!] to do.”
What if we, with Paul, stop connecting both our “failed” attempts AND our successful accomplishments with our identity? What if we let our sense of worth come from Christ? If we did, we might be able to walk into a room full of accomplished artists and engage them with a clear conscience; not anxious about how we measure up but rather curious to hear about them!
What if my perception of social media no longer held sway over my sense of worth? What if my motivation to create was no longer inhibited because I no longer NEED my followers to say that I am the fairest in the land? Imagine the childlike exuberance and delight that could characterize our art making if we were making art entirely as a loving response for the One who delights in and sings over us.
The key to being a self-forgetful artist is developing a humility that can only be formed by grace; by receiving rather than performing. Gospel humility is characterized by first listening to God’s assessment and really hearing what he says is true about who we are. If I am listening first to God’s words, my art making and interactions with others will be anchored in what is true. Tim Keller offers me words to say out loud in my studio: “You see, the verdict is in. And now I perform on the basis of the verdict. Because He loves me and He accepts me, I do not have to do things just to build up my résumé. I do not have to do things to make me look good. I can do things for the joy of doing them.”
What would it look like, or HAS it looked like for you to grow increasingly self-forgetful as an artist? I’m eager to hear and desperate to change with you as we walk together as servant-artists in Christ, entrusted with the mysteries of God.
