Studio Note: 3

03.06.25

…about art, that is?

Well, I’ve been thinking about exactly this. I think Catholic art is far more essential to our human experience than we might stop to notice—essential because it reveals the invisible realities that shape our world. I do not choose the word essential on a whim. Essential, necessary, required: without which we may not go very far.

It is easy to think of art as something that simply fills the blank spaces on our wall. Something that keeps our home colorful, keeps our rooms from looking like prison cells. And it’s just as easy to think of Catholic art as obligatory trappings: a statue of Mary, a crucifix. Maybe St. Francis out front, among the hydrangeas. Basic items in the “look-like-a-Catholic” starter kit.

But…it’s really not that at all.

So, why is Catholic art essential?

Here’s the fact. We live in the ruins of what once was—on a desolate planet where the most important activities and principal agents remain hidden from us. We live in a world where God once walked openly with man in a garden, where God once spoke with man on a mountain-top, where man once rode straight to God in a chariot. But most of us now live half-blind. We see only half of what is truly happening.

When the curtain is drawn at the end of the drama of life upon this earth, all that we now see with the naked eye will have passed away. And then what? I believe we are in grave danger of having lived content among shadows, of having built up our dreams with mere dust, of having loved only the shells of things.

Good art uses what is visible to suggest what is invisible. That’s why it’s essential. Catholic art represents to us things not visible to the naked eye but nonetheless real: saints, angels, the Lord Himself. Every great piece of Catholic art works hard to reveal as much truth as it can about its invisible subject. We just have to know how to see it.

The fact is, it’s not that God has withdrawn himself. It’s not that He is no longer in the garden, no longer on a mountain-top, no longer awaiting us in the sky. We are the ones who have forgotten the language, have forgotten how to read the signposts and symbols He leaves all around us to show us where He is and what He is doing and what He wants to do in our lives. Art has its own language of symbols, a language that was much more familiar to early Christians and is largely lost in the post-modern era. This can be re-learned, and with even a morsel of knowledge regained, large portals of Divine Truth open before us. Catholic art is a portal, accessed by the eye and entered by the heart.

Once we grow comfortable with this mode

of seeing beyond the merely tangible, we may also begin to notice the truths God has written across the entire created world. His fingerprint is everywhere upon creation. With practice, we can learn to read the sign-posts along the wide open way of the universe. 

This is my hope for the season of Lent: to step gingerly out onto this silent planet again, with fresh eyes to see what is happening every day right beneath my nose. “For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness.” We easily spend our lives content to see only shadows, to build only with dust, to gather empty shells into our hearts. We are in grave danger of waking up one day to find we’ve missed the point entirely.

In conclusion: Catholic art is far more than home decor. It’s far more than pretty. Beyond the surface of our humdrum lives is a world more real than our own, and Catholic art is a reminder of that. Could we learn to sit, silent and receptive, before these works, until they open their doors unto divine things? Refuse to settle for shadows when the light is so near!

If you long for art that speaks the deeper truths of our faith, I invite you to explore my collection. Each piece arrives with a symbolism card—a mini-lesson in Catholic imagery—to deepen your understanding of this rich language.