Prophetic Art & Spiritual Creativity

I've been quiet here for the past couple of weeks. Not because I had nothing to say, but because I had too much to say and no idea how to say it well.

On June 18th, Canada's Bill C-9 received Royal Assent. Around the same time, Bill C-22 has been moving through committee — legislation that would compel digital platforms to retain metadata and build in surveillance capability at the request of law enforcement. Different bills, different mechanisms, but the same question underneath both: what happens to expression — religious, artistic, prophetic — when the boundaries of what's "acceptable" to say get redrawn by people who were never going to like what you say in the first place?

Here's what makes this personal for me specifically. Bill C-9 removed something called the "good faith religious expression" defence from Canada's hate speech law — a provision that previously protected people who, in good faith, expressed an opinion on a religious subject or a belief grounded in a religious text. That protection is gone now.

I make prophetic art. That's not a vague spiritual aesthetic — it means the names, the stories, and the meaning behind my paintings come directly out of Scripture. Faith. Rivers of living color, my own riff on John 7:38. These aren't decorative titles. They're sincerely held religious beliefs I'm putting into paint, the same way someone else might put them into a sermon or a written testimony. My process — discovery over illustration, letting the composition lock in real time as I pray and paint — is itself an act of faith, not just a technique.

I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not going to pretend I've read every clause of either bill or that I know exactly how this will be applied. But I know what it means that the specific legal protection for religious expression — the kind of expression my entire body of work is built on — no longer exists the way it did a month ago. That's not a hypothetical. That's the actual change.

Right after I read the news, I watched the movie Leonie. Near the end, there's a quote that undid me:

"Your art will be your weapon. Your art will be your voice. There're no boundaries for an artist, no borders. Through art you can speak all languages and live a magnificent life, anywhere." —Leonie

I sat with that for a long time. Because here's the thing I keep coming back to: fear and faith cannot coexist. Fear is misplaced faith — faith pointed at the wrong outcome. Legislation, whatever its actual reach turns out to be, can become a very effective tool for cultivating fear in artists who would otherwise be brave enough to name the source of what they make.

So this is my decision, stated plainly: I am going to keep painting what Holy Spirit shows me. I am going to keep naming my paintings what they actually are — biblical, prophetic, rooted. I am going to keep being transparent about my process, because transparency is part of my integrity as an artist — even now, maybe especially now. If a painting is going to grow up over years the way mine do, it needs to be born honest.

I don't know yet what either of these bills will mean in practice, for me or for anyone else who creates work that speaks into faith or conscience. What I do know is that I'd rather be vulnerable on a canvas than silent out of fear.

Rivers of living color don't ask permission to flow.

I'd love to hear from you — has anything in the current cultural climate made you hesitate before naming what your work is really about?

I've been doing some admin work on my website lately — going through my art catalog, piece by piece. When I got to EGYPT, I found myself digging into its history, including who had actually bought it through Saatchi Art. What I found gave me a real lift, and underscored just how much this piece mattered.

Let me back up.

In 2017, I painted EGYPT in my studio in Oakville — pyramids under a moonlit sky, acrylic on canvas, 16×20 inches. It came fast. I remember knowing, even as I painted it, that it was special. It sold within a few days of being uploaded to Saatchi.

But the painting had a strange beginning. I had personally always associated dark things with Egypt. And I painted this piece in the week after an overnight stay at a sleep clinic. It wasn't until my consult to review the results that I learned the owner of the clinic was Egyptian — his office was full of Egyptian artifacts. I believe I was affected by the atmosphere of that place. The spirit of Egypt stayed with me, and it came out in the work.

Being spiritually sensitive, this left me with real questions. What spirit had influenced me? I didn't have an answer at the time.

That's part of why this recent discovery meant so much to me. Going back through the catalog, I learned the painting had gone to Delaware, Ohio, into the collection of John A. Kohan — former New York Times foreign correspondent, sacred art collector, and curator of the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection. John collects sacred and spiritual art from around the world. I could not have asked for a more fitting home for this piece.

And then there's the part I learned even earlier, in 2020. I had the privilege of being part of a prayer team covering an apostolic journey to Israel. During that time, Holy Spirit opened my eyes to Isaiah 19 — Egypt's prophetic destiny.

"In that day there will be an altar to the LORD in the heart of Egypt." Isaiah 19:19

That passage stopped me. Egypt — the historic house of slavery in Israel's memory — is named in Isaiah as part of a future blessing with Israel and Assyria. Not erased. Not discarded. Named.

This isn't only an old passage to me. The "Isaiah 19 Highway" language I encountered in intercessory and prophetic circles points to something many believe is unfolding now — in this generation, not a distant one.

EGYPT: How my biggest sale wasn't just about money

I've been doing some admin work on my website lately — going through my art catalog, piece by piece. When I got to EGYPT, I found myself digging into its history, including who had actually bought it through Saatchi Art. What I found gave me a real lift, and underscored just how much this piece mattered.

Let me back up.

In 2017, I painted EGYPT in my studio in Oakville — pyramids under a moonlit sky, acrylic on canvas, 16×20 inches. It came fast. I remember knowing, even as I painted it, that it was special. It sold within a few days of being uploaded to Saatchi.

But the painting had a strange beginning. I had personally always associated dark things with Egypt. And I painted this piece in the week after an overnight stay at a sleep clinic. It wasn't until my consult to review the results that I learned the owner of the clinic was Egyptian — his office was full of Egyptian artifacts. I believe I was affected by the atmosphere of that place. The spirit of Egypt stayed with me, and it came out in the work.

Being spiritually sensitive, this left me with real questions. What spirit had influenced me? I didn't have an answer at the time.

That's part of why this recent discovery meant so much to me. Going back through the catalog, I learned the painting had gone to Delaware, Ohio, into the collection of John A. Kohan — former New York Times foreign correspondent, sacred art collector, and curator of the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection. John collects sacred and spiritual art from around the world. I could not have asked for a more fitting home for this piece.

And then there's the part I learned even earlier, in 2020. I had the privilege of being part of a prayer team covering an apostolic journey to Israel. During that time, Holy Spirit opened my eyes to Isaiah 19 — Egypt's prophetic destiny.

"In that day there will be an altar to the LORD in the heart of Egypt." Isaiah 19:19

That passage stopped me. Egypt — the historic house of slavery in Israel's memory — is named in Isaiah as part of a future blessing with Israel and Assyria. Not erased. Not discarded. Named.

This isn't only an old passage to me. The "Isaiah 19 Highway" language I encountered in intercessory and prophetic circles points to something many believe is unfolding now — in this generation, not a distant one.

That passage answered my question about the painting. But it gave me something bigger than that, too. It showed me the heart of God for that nation. His character. His redemptive nature, always. He is so much bigger than my mind can comprehend. His ways are not my ways. He is good and faithful — and I am so limited by my own perspective.

I didn't know any of this when I painted EGYPT. I knew pyramids. I knew a sky that felt like prophecy. I knew the painting was special, and I knew it carried something I couldn't fully name. But God knew what He was saying.

This is what keeps happening to me — I rediscover how prophetic a piece turns out to be, and it makes me take the work more seriously. The painting isn't just illustration or planned symbolism. It can be something the Spirit was brooding over before I understood it myself, sometimes before the world caught up to it too.

EGYPT taught me that.

Have you ever made something, prayed something, or painted something — and only understood what it meant, or watched it come true, years later?

Now then this has been one of those wow moments for me..I sometimes find these when I am just put-zing around my studio.. so with this one I was just experimenting with some sponges and diluted acrylic inks..I started on a canvas and found the colors did not absorb well..so I switched to paper..as per usual,I often photograph my work and like to use a invert color filter in an app I use..and then there you have it..the last photo is actually the original..as I stated the other 2 are reversed color.. so in my mind I do not really care about the anti AI agents here..I think in this case the work speaks for itself.. welcome to those who would like to decide which view is better, or more pronounced.. for the original, as the title suggests, I just embraced the chaos of the moment..then surprise.. I get this result..for me, I believe this may by a newer type of style for me and will be working with it.. Thanks, enjoy.

For me, it usually does not start with a fully formed picture in my head. I start with color, motion, atmosphere, or a sense of invitation. I make marks. I respond. I look. I wait. I keep asking, What is this becoming? What are You showing me here?

Sometimes the meaning arrives while I'm painting. Sometimes it comes later. Usually I am praying. At some point what I see begins to suggest what the piece is about.

Is it because that is what it is supposed to be? Or is it that I see what is already inside me? I think it is both. Holy Spirit lights up what He is saying — and you are able to receive it because of your relationship with Him, with the Word, and with your walk. Out of your innermost being will flow rivers of living water. I would say rivers of living color.

That is one of the reasons I love prophetic art. It is not always illustration. Sometimes it is discovery.

Once I know what the piece is about and I have locked onto the composition, the artist in me really enjoys the technical work — pushing to bring out the message in ever increasing painterly ways.

I often go back to older paintings and take them further. My understanding has grown. My skill has grown. Why wouldn't the painting?

I think of my paintings as my children. Taking iPhone pictures at each stage is a bit like photographing your kids growing up. They should grow up.

I'd love to hear from others here: Do you ever revisit finished work — or does a painting feel done once you set it down?

Land of the Rising Sun, 12x12 in acrylic on canvas mounted on panel board

Anne Reid asked me to repost this story from General to this community, thinking it would be interesting to you all.

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Have you ever noticed that many times when you make the “right” and responsible head decisions, they often come at the expense of your heart? Even if the desire of your heart is as yet an unspoken elemental need, life has a way of making it impossible for you to keep denying those buried yearnings, and for me it was art.

 Pursuing art was an irresponsible career path I’d been told time and again.  Choose something that you’d be good at and can enable you to support yourself.  Only much later, in light of my mother’s successful career as an artist, would I understand the irony of those messages.

          So I shoved my heart aside. I made it a whole year in college, making responsible choices, working hard in my liberal studies degree in order to be prepared to enter teaching one day.  Frankly, I didn’t have time to think about it as I was also working full time to put myself through school. Too much contemplation could easily derail me, I knew. I would not let that happen.  My goals were written out as well as my timeline to accomplish them.  

         I held out nine months.  I made it until my first college summer.

        Unable to stand it any longer, I swallowed my fear and feelings of inferiority when it came to art, and I signed up for a painting class that first summer after my Freshman year of college in 1979.  The teaching artist relit the fire within me.  His name was André Andreoli, the most famous 19th Century Dutch Romantic Landscape painter in the world living at that time, and he was visiting Santa Barbara that summer. Born in Holland, but the son of a successful businessman from Milan, I might never know how he ended up teaching a class at Westmont that summer, but I look back on it now as God prodding me directly.

            To say André was eccentric, enigmatic, and a force of nature was putting it mildly! Ten people had signed up for this summer class.  By week two, eight dropped out because he was so demanding and exacting, and his hot-headed Italian personality was off-putting to the sheltered Christian college students. He WAS a little bit terrifying at first! I had expected him to cancel class with only two of us left, as he would be basically working for free; I was only auditing the class after all. The need to paint had felt like it had been clawing at my soul, so the missing out on the credit didn't matter to me. I remember him standing there before Cathy and me, a thin, bony man, who seemed to vibrate with energy, giving off a sense of fierce strength. His long straggly black hair draping haphazardly around his shoulders, he was like someone you’d see in a movie featuring artists of the Renaissance. 

“Well, now I am left with the two of you.” We waited, unsure as to what he’d say next. Would he cancel class?  Then he followed with, “The only two that care to be here.” He grunted.  “To the rest, good riddance! He flung his arm out to emphasize his words.  Now, we can finally get to work!” Our eyes widened in pent up laughter, but we both found ourselves nodding eagerly, albeit somewhat nervously.  I expelled a relieved breath, which earned me a sharp look down his long nose, followed by a slow quirk of his lips, as close to a smile as I’d seen from him until that moment.  Oh yeah, he was a little scary, but my burning need to paint far outweighed my tender feelings and sensitivity, and honestly, there was this driving, insatiable passion for God and art that seemed to consume him.  It was utterly contagious.  

            Cathy and I remained for the summer, the class becoming more a private mentoring studio for two young women passionate about art.  It was a tough class, emotionally as well as in learning curve for me. He ranted and raved at me, the lesser skilled of the two students, often throwing his hands in the air and his long black hair whipping around him in loud, dramatic Italian consternation.  Sometimes he threw his brush across the room in frustration.  He’d grab my hand and yelled, “No! NO! Like this!” as he guided the line and pressure of the brush to help me “feel” the paint and create accurate line.

Painstakingly, I painted, then repainted again and again, often working long into the night after work, trying to apply the learning in painting an Italian façade.  My result was very mediocre at best, but I keep it around as a reminder of André and the lessons about painting, art, life and God that I learned from him that summer. Every so often, I have the notion to add to it, refine it, finish it, with the skills that 40 years since have taught me, but I haven’t wanted to disappoint him after all of the time and effort he put into me that summer.

            Later in the course, I asked him why he’d decided to teach the class with only two people, and me only auditing the class at $25 because I couldn’t afford the price of the units.  He said he didn’t care about money, but that he did care about fire.  “I saw the fire in your eyes.”  He said that it was all he needed to see in a student…a “fire inside to paint.”  He told me “I can't teach a student to have fire, they either have it or they didn’t.  Skill I can teach, fire I can’t.”

Looking back now over my own career as a teacher and art teacher, I totally can understand and resonate with those sentiments. I can still name those students I've had in 38 years who had that "fire inside to paint"...Carlie, Anna, Liam, Alexis, Eliana, Kayvon, Jordan, Harry, and Olivia.

            Having the opportunity to work with André Andreoli a world-renown painter is a cherished gift I never took lightly.

Forty-five years later, after that long career of teaching I did go on to do, I have returned to my first love of paint and am painting with that fire and passion I so loved in André. While my style is different, the romantic influence of my earliest lessons with him are evidenced in my art I am realizing now.....and so too, I paint to hopefully glorify God, and share the love and beauty given us by the ultimate Creator. Thank you, André Andreoli.

Iryna Belova-Smorzh is an artist here in Arthelper. Her work is equisite...the theme of this post fits with this group so I wanted to share it. This is the best I can do. You have to click on the link to view.

https://www.arthelper.com/community/portraitart/post/the-pain-of-disappointment

The hands in this painting are my hands.

This painting is called Community. I painted the original as a watercolor in 2007 at the National House of Prayer in Ottawa, after I gave away the only food I had brought with me to a woman on the sidewalk who needed it more than I did.

Years later, life imitated art.

In 2022, Community became a print that was used as a thank-you gift for major donors to Kids Against Hunger Canada. A painting that began with one small act of giving became part of a much larger story of giving.

That is one of the things I love about prophetic art. The paintings have a life of their own and the story unfolds over time.

For me, Community is rooted in Isaiah 58 — true fasting expressed through mercy, sharing, and care for the person in front of us.

By the way...the printer framed it upside-down which I discovered when I looked at the FB post. I had to have it redone.

I have followed Matt Tommey for years and even had the opportunity to interview him in Facebook Live. He is at the forefront of the Christian Arts Community Globally. With real world art success in and outside the four walls of the Church, he takes his mandate to raise up an army of Christian Artists seriously. He proves the Starving Artist thing is bogus and shows you how to connect with God and his plan for your artistic journey. His faith tradition is Charismatic Evangelical Christian.

https://thrive.matttommeymentoring.com/yourartmatterstogod

The purpose of this piece was to connect directly with the subconscious in order to convey the feeling that this is something some have seen before..

The beginning of this story is not what you might expect.

Before I had painted seriously, someone spoke something over me — what those in my faith tradition would call a prophetic word: a Spirit-led impression, spoken out loud, as an encouragement for the road ahead. She told me that when people saw my artwork, healing would be released. That a new stream of creativity was coming — and for me, that meant something significant. My primary creative expression for decades had been dance. This word was pointing to something entirely new. That I would find colours I had only seen in heaven, and that the anointing of the Lord would be on it.

I hadn't earned that word. I hadn't proven anything yet. It was given before the work existed.

And then, in the year that followed, I went through one of the hardest seasons of my life. A significant betrayal. A crushing. It happened in a context I had poured myself into, which made it cut deeper.

Art had always been part of my life. But without that crushing, I believe I would have stayed where I was comfortable and familiar — in dance, in what I already knew. The crushing didn't just wound me. It moved me. It broke open new ground, new territory I would never have stepped into otherwise. Creating became part of how I healed. But it also became something I would never have found if everything had stayed intact.

So when I began sharing my work, I wasn't posting from strength. I was posting from somewhere much more tender than that. Every finished painting went up. Consistently. For ten years.

In the beginning, the fears were all there. What will people think? What if nobody responds? What if they think, who does she think she is?

I already knew what rejection felt like. That didn't make it easier to risk it again. In some ways it made it harder.

But I posted anyway.

Here's what ten years of doing that taught me.

Fear is misplaced faith. It's faith that something bad will happen — and the more you believe it, the more power you hand it. You cannot live in fear and in faith at the same time. They cannot occupy the same space.

You cannot wait until you're perfect before you start. And you cannot let what other people think stop you — because the truth is, most people are not thinking about you anyway. Whatever response they have to your work, or don't have, is far more about where they are than where you are.

That realization was freeing for me. The silence after a post, the scroll-past, the no-response — none of it was a verdict. It was just people living their lives.

In the tradition I come from, prophecy works the same way. You risk speaking a still, small impression out loud. You might be wrong. You might be ignored. But you learn to separate your worth from the response. The whole creative process is very similar — you risk putting something on canvas that came from somewhere deep inside you, and then you post it for the world to see.

This painting is called Faith.

She isn't standing in safety. She's standing in fire — arms open, leaning into the light. I understand that posture now in a way I couldn't have before the crushing. Faith that has never been tested doesn't look like this. This is faith that knows what fire feels like and opens anyway.

A note on this image, because transparency matters to me and to this community.

The print you're seeing here is not AI generated. It began as an original acrylic painting on paper — you can see the original above — which I then mounted on panel board. For the print version, I used a photo editing tool to make adjustments, the most significant being the addition of a spotlight. This was one of my early experiments in taking original, hand-made work and developing it for prints.

I document this process fully in the integrity notes on my website for any work where the print differs meaningfully from the original. I think artists who are navigating this space — where digital tools meet original work — owe their collectors and their community that honesty. I'm committed to it.

After a decade of consistently sharing my work, I can say honestly that I have no fear about posting anymore. Not because the fear stopped coming — but because repetition changed my relationship to it. I stopped letting it make the decisions.

I experienced the same thing again recently when I started the Prophetic Art group here in ArtHelper. Same hesitation. Will people understand this? Is this too niche? Am I the only one here who thinks this way?

I started it anyway. There are now around 100 members.

What I'm learning — still learning — is how to talk about what I carry in a way that opens doors rather than closes them. That doesn't happen in private.

If you're holding something back — a painting, a creative direction, something you sense but haven't put out yet — I want to say this plainly:

The freedom doesn't come before the risk. It comes because you kept showing up while you were still afraid.

And sometimes the most powerful thing you can offer others is the work you made while you were still healing.

Post it. Someone may need exactly what you made.

What's one piece you've been hesitant to share? Drop it below — I'd genuinely love to see it. 👇

There are moments in an artist’s life when something happens quietly, almost seamlessly, and yet you know it is the fruit of years.

Recently, two art prints sold through my Art Storefronts website. Both were based on paintings I created years ago — works that felt deeply significant to me from the beginning, even though they had not yet found their first print collectors.

One was Pentecost. The other was The Apple.

Both paintings carried prophetic meaning for me when they were first created. They were not casual works. They were not simply decorative images. They came out of prayer, conviction, color, symbolism, and a sense that the image was carrying something beyond itself.

And then, for a long time, nothing happened.

That is one of the strange disciplines of being an artist. You can know, very deeply, that a work matters — and still have to wait for the right person, the right time, the right moment of recognition.

These recent sales reminded me that vision often has a long arc.

One buyer was a repeat client. Another was someone who had been following my work for years and suddenly decided to purchase. In both cases, the beauty of the moment was not only that a print sold. It was that the prophetic message of the work resonated with the person receiving it.

That matters to me.

Of course, I am grateful for the business side of it. I am grateful that the website worked, that the order process was seamless, and that a system I had envisioned years ago is beginning to do what it was built to do: allow people to discover and collect meaningful work even when I am not personally standing in front of them explaining it.

But the deeper joy is this: the paintings found people who understood why they existed.

That is the part that moves me most.

Artists often have to build in faith. We make the work before we know where it will go. We create the website before all the buyers arrive. We write the statements, photograph the paintings, upload the products, organize the archive, and keep showing up long before there is visible momentum.

Sometimes it can feel foolish.

But then, suddenly, someone who has been watching for years takes action. A repeat collector returns. A painting created long ago speaks again in the present tense.

That is when vision pays off.

Not because everything becomes easy.

But because the long, unseen work begins to bear fruit.

I have always believed that prophetic art can meet people at the level of meaning. Not only color, not only composition, not only beauty — but recognition. A sense that something in the work is speaking to something in them.

So when someone writes with joy about finally ordering a piece, or tells me they are looking forward to another, I do not take that lightly.

It tells me the work is still alive.

It tells me the message is still travelling.

It tells me that paintings made years ago can still arrive on time.

So happy!

Good morning community - this is a shout out for my friend Ruth Fazel.

"I am so happy to finally announce the release of CREATION - The Film.

I believe that this film is something very unique, and far beyond anything I could have imagined when I first wrote the music.

After I finished the music, I knew that it needed to be presented in a visual format, and so I approached a long time artist friend, Kevin Moffatt, to create a series of abstract paintings on the theme of Creation. This film brings the music and the art together, and as you watch, you will see the paintings literally come to life.

Click the image below to view the trailer and then be sure to pass this email on to your friends. I really look forward to hearing your response after you have watched the film. I am looking for your help, to get the word out far and wide...

Enjoy!

Biggest blessings, Ruth Ruth Fazal

A breathtaking fusion of music and visual art bringing the Genesis story into the present. Through advanced technology, the artwork moves, grows, and transforms—inviting you into a living creation that awakens the imagination and the soul.

MUSIC Ruth Fazal

ART Kevin Moffatt

TEXT Genesis 1-2:3

"In the beginning God created the heavens

and the earth..."

For more information visit

https://www.ruthfazal.com/ creation

https://www.mannaart.com

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At first look its a little bizarre and otherworldly in a strange way, but a burning mountain on fire with a thunderous voice and shaking wasn't exactly a pretty landscape to the people leaving Egypt or to Moses who literally said that he was trembling at the site of it.

I don't think this causes too much shaking or trembling but there is a supernatural force and movement in the rhythms of the line and movements in the lines of the trees (thank God Van Gogh got the idea before me!)

There is a feeling of rushing water and life rising, even though the tree is literally dead, it carries a force and energy to it. The background with the canyons and bushes with the fiery reds reminded of a supernatural life, angelic beings that are all around it. Fire and water, separate yet stirring up between each other. Fire and water were often symbols of spirit and God's presence in the bible, so when I saw this dead tree and background from a photograph, I thought of pairing them up together.

Sometimes we put spiritual things as being pretty and floating, yet whenever someone saw an angel, they were terrified and the angel had to say to them, not to fear. Makes one wonder what they physically looked like to cause such a stir. I don't think they were pretty at all but a little fearsome, to make Daniel drop to his knees.

Commission for Saugeen Springs RV Park depicting the owner's dream for her Kingdom Business:)

One of the reasons abstraction matters in spiritual art is that it does not force the viewer into a single literal conclusion too quickly.

A literal image can tell you what you are looking at.

But abstraction can create space for encounter.

It can carry movement, weight, atmosphere, fire, rest, tension, mercy, light, or presence in a way that is felt before it is explained.

For me, that is often where prophetic art begins — not in decoration, and not in vagueness, but in trying to be faithful to something perceived in prayer that is deeper than illustration alone.

I’m curious how others here experience this:

Do you find that abstraction can sometimes say spiritual things more truthfully than a more literal image can?

Or do you feel most connected to work when the imagery is more clearly defined?

Shown here: Advent 7

#PropheticArt
#SpiritualArt
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