I have been thinking about the weight of creating. Images and marks have the power to shape the creation into an ever changing land and people -scape  . I reflected back on this poem I wrote in 2006.  

To Rule

Towering piney sentinels of my domain

Spiny tops, dark brown bark

What is their end?

MacMansions, ice storms, texts for good or evil?

The Dogwood elbows for space in my domain

Ready to show it’s red bud, its winter structure its spring whiteness, its everchanging leaves,

a reminder of blood shed on a frame of wood from one like me?

The vines and grasses of my domain grow wild,

ever moving to claim more ground,

like hungry children rushing for a toxic meal

The rhythms of nature send each member of my domain on their way,

no memory,

no history,

no choice,

no making ,

no aspiration,

a garden lost.

Ice, chemicals, acid rain, Mac Mansions, cheap art is this their end?

I sit at my window this portal into past and future.

No memory, no compass.

Why did I not measure?

Why did I not remember?

Restore the beauty,

Recall,

bring forth new glory from my domain!

Gary Bradley 2006

I wonder how in tune iam to the phrase  from the poem "The rhythms of nature send each member of my domain on their way"

Painting live in Colorado is one of the best experiences for me to grow as a Mark Maker. I use the term Mark Maker, because it describes the work I do with my painting and my life.  As a painter or as a person, I must learn to see what the reality around me is, so that I have the eyes to see. Then I begin to make marks that represent reality (to the best of my ability). So in painting I use these four marks or language; Value, Shape, Edges and Texture.  I learned this language from the artist Josh Been in Salida, CO. If you have a chance check him out on his website, and let him know I sent you in his direction. https://www.joshuabeen.com/

In my day to day life the  language of my mark making is about being attentive to the people around me and asking “How I can be an encouragement and a person who adds to someone’s life?”  The marks I want to make are : Love, Attentiveness, and Forgiveness, to name just a few of the available ones for me to develop.  

Whether it’s through painting, or in relationships, I must learn to see. When that happens, there is the emergence of beauty. A beauty that transcends the material and opens our eyes to even-more beauty. This is a small gouache painting from on location in Abo, NM. It is of the ruins of the northern most trading post established by the Franciscan Priest.  Their mark, even with the ravages of time still exude beauty for those who have eyes to see it.  (Happily a patron has commission me to paint a larger sized piece of this view.) 

Keep seeing , keep making your mark

Gary 

“Rehumanizing my world through beauty” is our mission. How do we make this mission a vehicle for the gospel is the question that we as artists pursue.

Beauty can be expressed as “When things are as they ought to be.” The impact of such beauty is that Humans flourish.

Our view is formed from the “Genesis Story, which in itself is a magnificent form of storytelling art,” that describes the creation of the world, culminating in two statements: it is good, it is very good. At the core of that message is that out of chaos came cosmos.**

Now let us tell you about Art & Tea. Julia and I are hosting a monthly art event in our home. We asked a Christian couple that we are discipling to invite four non-Christians to The Tea, on a Sunday afternoon from 1:30-4 pm. Guests arrive for a High Tea experience crafted by Julia, plus we have elegant tea hats for the ladies. Then we adjourn to the studio, where I give a short talk about being a Mark Maker. I explain that it is the role of what we call artists. We make marks on canvas, on the piano, in writing, in sewing, in cooking, and on and on. We make marks with the nature of our life, and we are a mark, made at creation to make the creator's mark in the world.

Then I begin to paint, and after 90 minutes I finish. We have a drawing, and one guest leaves with a complete painting. Last month, we had a full house with 8 guests. After the event, people were hanging out. One guest asked if she could visit the woman's studio (our friend who is co-laboring with us). Just today I received a card in the mail from another guest and she is asking to spend time with me in the studio.

Our goal is to demonstrate how to talk about beauty and how beauty opens the door to the Kingdom.

We are bringing beauty into our guests' experience as a reality. Beauty penetrates our souls at a visceral level. It opens the doors for a meaningful and shared experience.**

(ornamental order- look at Julia’s tea set up- or think of a business that causes humanity to flourish)! 

Long before men could articulate their ideas in written form they captured the divine experience, the mysterious. Cave paintings, rituals, voice sounds, instrumental sounds and gestures were among the many attempts to convey the abstract. In Paul Johnson’s Art, A New History he writes, “The first point to grasp is the immense fecundity of humans producing objects of art. I argue (Johnson) here that art predated not only writing but probably structured speech too, that it was closely associated with the ordering instinct which makes society possible, and that it has therefore always been essential to human happiness. The artist was the first professional.”

One wonders how God could have so trusted the spirit and ordering instinct of man to engage in His truth and spirit and convey it to his neighbor. One wonders, why didn’t God invent writing and structured speech in the beginning so there would never be error about His eternal presences? Perhaps error was not His big concern with man. Somewhere in the human spirit emerges a longing to express the divine in images. What role did Christendom play in celebrating and or crushing the iconographic urge? To represent God in form through the arts seems to be inevitable. In my reflections on Hebrews 1:3, I’m thrilled to see a God who could trust the revelation of His being though the ages to the hands and hearts of those who longed to see Him. His radiance shines forth and is seen. 

Long before men could articulate their ideas in written form they captured the divine experience, the mysterious. Cave paintings, rituals, voice sounds, instrumental sounds and gestures were among the many attempts to convey the abstract. In Paul Johnson’s Art A New History he writes “The first point to grasp is the immense fecundity of humans producing objects of art. I argue (Johnson) here that art predated not only writing but probably structured speech too, that it was closely associated with the ordering instinct which makes society possible, and that it has therefore always been essential to human happiness. The artist was the first professional.” Pp1

One wonders how God could have so trusted the spirit and ordering instinct of man to engage in His truth and spirit and convey it to his neighbor. One wonders, why didn’t God invent writing and structured speech in the beginning so there would never be error about His eternal presences? Perhaps error was not His big concern with man. Somewhere in the human spirit emerges a longing to express the divine in images. What role did Christendom play in celebrating and or crushing the iconographic urge? To represent God in form through the arts seems to be inevitable. In my reflections on Hebrews 1:3 I’m thrilled to see a God who could trust the revelation of His being though the ages to the hands and hearts of those who longed to see Him. His radiance shines forth and is seen.

 “By logic and reason we die hourly, by imagination we live.”  -W.B. Yeats

As I approach a new painting, I find I need to unplug from my efficient, productive world. Our work, whether it be in the arts, the factory, or the corporate building, requires our imagination, and efficiency and productivity are not always servants of beauty. We ask, “How can I make 'this' better?” So in the world of visual art, you explore. For example, I will attempt to draw a simple TEN LINES ONLY image of what I want to paint. I might use a black marker and shade in every shape in a prospective painting, so I can see the separation of light and dark. Or maybe I will consider all the possible color combinations that are not present in the original work. Each step sparks a new idea and eliminates another. Our lives are like a painting; we search for new combinations of experience, talents, and communities to enlarge our world. Each little step is like an act of listening, which is far more experimental than hearing.  I think the poet Yetes could have added to the beginning quote by saying… “Become a listener and art maker by exploring “what Could Be?” 

Gary Bradley

January 16th, 2026 

From Cary, NC

Post modernity (Beauty)  The undercurrent is to deconstruct reality and to deny anything other than a personal reality and to reject realism,.   Thus we destroy beauty. The elite give us a "persuasive theory" to understand the world. Read the brief book "the Painted Word" by Thomas Wolfe to see how he describes this perversion of beauty.

"I believe that it (Beauty) is important for the health of culture, and in that I include what can be called the salvation or human flourishing in all dimensions of life of those who in various ways make and are shaped by culture (all of us), that we should be able to hold some positive relation, yet without reducing one to another, the three central dimensions of human being: its formation by truth, goodness and beauty. Without a measure of integration of our knowledge, ethics and experience of beauty we are not fully what we might be."

Colin Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, 1993...page 117

Its snowing ( a little bit) in C and such a lovely day to paint.  Thinking this morning that the work of an artist includes reflection and engagement in the deepest part of the soul. There you discover what you have planted to grow.  Is it the fake news cycle, the twitter world, the random gossip of th day or perhaps a commitment to learn who God is and let that shape you?  This morning I choose the latter because I need to love more.

"The word care finds its origin in the word 'kara,' which means to lament, to mourn, to participate in suffering, to share in pain. To care is to cry out with those who are ill, confused, lonely, isolated, and forgotten, and to recognize their pains in your own heart. To care is to enter into the world of those who are broken and powerless and to establish there a fellowship of the weak. To care is to embrace affectionately those who may be touched by hostile hands, to listen attentively to those whose words fall on deaf ears, and to speak gently with those who are used to harsh orders and impatient comments. To care is to be present to those who suffer and to stay present, even when nothing can be done to change their situation." #HenriNouwen 

The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. 

These things -- the beauty, the memory of our own past -- are good images of what we really desire, but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. 

For they are not the thing itself, they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never visited. 

C.S. Lewis.