Juxtaposition
When I first created my painting “Little Blue House”, it was purely because I liked the way the house was situated in the countryside. All alone and seemingly so important, though I couldn’t figure out why.
Once fully completed, my painting taught me why that little house had caught my eye. It stands out among the countryside, yes, but it also grounds you in the scene. It anchors you to the realization of just how big the mountains are, and the unexpected nature of the house also draws your attention to the beauty that surrounds it.
jux·ta·po·si·tion
/ˌjəkstəpəˈziSHən/
noun
the fact of two things being seen or placed close together with contrasting effect.
"the juxtaposition of these two images"
It was through looking at my own painting that I learned the power of juxtaposition, specifically when it comes to contrasting the large with the small. I started looking through my portfolio to see whether I had used this technique unknowingly in any other past paintings, and I had! In my painting “Thunderhead” I added the people on the beach as the very last step because I felt like the painting was missing something. That small addition (literally) brought the whole painting together and captured the feeling that I experienced while standing on that beach while beholding the approaching storm.
I started thinking about how I could use this technique in future works. I just moved to Arizona rather recently and I want to paint a lot more scenes like the one in “Little Blue House”. I want to capture the feeling of being there and not just the topical beauty of the scenery. The reason that Arizona is so breathtaking is because of the vastness of it – the untamed beauty of untouched land. But when it’s just paint on a canvas, it’s hard to figure out how big and wild it’s supposed to be – because you’re only looking at part of what is a bigger whole. That’s why juxtaposition is so important.
While considering all of this, I realized how often I implement the practice of juxtaposition in my daily life. A hot cup of coffee on a stressful day is something small to focus on that helps calm my mind amid chaos surrounding me. A hike during an emotional crisis forces me to look at the beauty of the wide-open world – the vastness of the sky, the earth, and how much life exists other than myself. It shrinks my problems down to their appropriate size and takes the pressure off. It doesn’t make them go away or solve them, but it gives me a place to put them: among the rest of the world, where they should be.
We get so involved in our own selves that we forget our life is a canvas, and we become stuck - staring at one corner. Take a step back and you’ll see that you’re still a work in progress. Look around, you’re in a studio – among several other unfinished works of art. Take a walk and you’ll find that there are countless other studios full of lives being created, but further still there are galleries of lives that have come before. There is a whole world of art that you will never see if you don’t look beyond your own canvas.
All this consideration of our lives amidst the lives of others recalled something else to me: the common Christian phrase of being “in the world but not of the world” (Stay with me). I looked it up to fully formulate my thoughts on how this relates to what I’ve been writing, but to my surprise that phrase does not explicitly appear in the bible. I found a really good article that explains it well and is totally worth the read: https://medium.com/@aaronmchidester/the-bible-does-not-say-to-be-in-the-world-but-not-of-it-ca582fd0d42c
To make a long (worthwhile) story short, Aaron Chidester does a deep dive into scripture and rephrases the popular saying into something a little more explicit. He explains that Jesus’ disciples weren’t just ‘in the world and not of the world’, they were ‘taken out of, not of, sanctified, and sent into.’
Thankfully, the connection I initially made between my painting and the biblical instruction still stands (I’m very excited about it). Christians are meant to be in the world and are sent into it to exist alongside the evil of it and be a light for God. The evil of the world will be brought to light by our presence if we are walking with the Holy Spirit, and we can be a friend to those who are lost like we were before. We can juxtapose our joy in the eternal with the suffering on earth, especially when we are the ones experiencing the suffering.
Now don’t get it twisted - it’s not about contrasting our own “holy” selves with the other people around us. All that flawed way of thinking accomplishes is instilling in us a false sense of pride and superiority that pushes people away from God – not because that pride represents who God is, but because we who claim to represent God are hurting people with our inflated sense of self. We must remember that without the grace of God and his work in our lives, we were once lost. Yes, we do have to choose God, but we all fall short in this practice sometimes. Additionally, we would not be where we are in our lives or our relationship with God without some kindness bestowed by others. Think about the people who have helped you find God in your life and walked with you through dark times – did you ever feel like they were looking down on you? Did they ever have a holier-than-thou attitude? The answer is probably no – so what do you think you would accomplish by fostering the belief that you are better than those around you?
The first step to being a light for God in this world is humility – because that is what will stand out against a culture of pride. That is what will bring to attention the hidden evil of the world and bring God’s love to people who don’t know him yet. If you feel too small to positively impact the world, zoom in on the canvas of your life, or look around the studio of canvases that surround you. Your life is just as big as the lives around you, and you have the power to bring joy and love to others. If you feel too self-important and can’t seem to get off your high horse long enough to talk to your neighbor, zoom out for a moment and see how small your horse is compared to the mountains that surround you.
Anyways, back to that little blue house - I love it. I love the fact that it somehow adds more beauty to the already gorgeous landscape. I love that in something that looks so small and insignificant from a distance, life is blossoming. I love that whoever lives there decided to paint their house blue.
