SILVERTON VAULTS

Artist’s Statement  |  1st Congregational Church of Silverton, UCC

These six paintings are six parts of one work made specifically for this physical space, a church; for you, the people of this church; and for the people of this town.  Prior to the execution of the actual pieces I needed to consider the following:

1. What was aesthetically right for the architectural setting?
2. What was conceptually and spiritually right for this particular church and its people?
3. What was the right visual connection with our sublime mountainous setting?

There is a double reason for the arch of the canvases:  it echoes architectural elements within the church and also echoes the vault of the sky.  

I have painted our valley.  The point of view is from the Shrine Road.  The landscape features roughly correspond with what is outside the church windows:  Boulder, just clouds, Galena, Kendall, Pigeon and Turk, going around the sanctuary.  But I limited the specificity of those particular landscape features and the amount of focus on them.  I did this because I wanted the emphasis on the clouds and sky and what they can suggest.  This is a church, so the spiritual realm is really the heart of the matter.

To think about God is to consider the inconsiderable, the not confinable, the unknowable.  If I dare deal with this subject I can only make suggestions or pointers.  I have used clouds and the color blue toward this end.  There is a Hebrew word, “makom” which means both place and God.  So in a way, place and God are equated or are the same.  These paintings are a celebration of a place of God.

Judith Graham
Silverton, Colorado  |  July 2009