ART IS

The faith and philosophy behind one artist’s craft.

Much of this book is devoted to Fujimura’s practice, a classical Japanese technique called Nihonga, which involves painting with a prismatic substance created by grinding rare minerals into a binding glue. The pigments refract light, and the minerals change over time, resulting in a meditative experience that’s unique to each observer. Fujimura (Art and Faith, 2021, etc.) calls these paintings “slow art” and explains that they require “more than a hundred layers before I start to paint any movement or images, and then the surface will sometimes rest over years before the images reveal themselves.” Fujimura explores other historical Japanese practices like tea ceremonies and ceramics and traces their influence on his work. While these digressions shine, Fujimura falters in his many attempts to articulate the Christian philosophy behind his life as an artist. The author claims to feel “God’s sacred Presence in the studio” and recounts a moment while painting where he was “forced to kneel to pray” after being overwhelmed by higher powers. He reminisces about spiritual energy that coursed through him while painting at age 3, and he proudly hangs a childhood artwork in his home today: “I did not know what to call that experience, which I assumed everyone had.” “God, the only true Artist, lovingly crushed me over the years,” he bombastically proclaims, “so I can now be fully God’s ‘material,’ to be invited to participate in the Spirit’s prismatic prayer to the darkest corners.” Passages like these, as well as repetitive vague references to contemporary “culture wars,” reveal an underlying lack of direction to the book. There’s little here for art aficionados to latch onto, as ideas about creativity are consistently obscured by Fujimura’s boastful sense of enlightenment. Those looking for a light, spiritual read will have more success with the author’s urges to “see the infinite in the grain of sand,” but ultimately the book is consumed by a conspicuous sense of self-importance.

A conceited misfire.