Artist: Karen Sewell
“My aspiration was to express on the urn something that visually may speak of the extravagant generosity and love of God while also suiting the style and lineage of the pottery object. Using colour, design and/or symbol to convey and connect a viewer with some sense of how abundantly God provides for us, how generous and giving God is. The process of creating for me includes prayer and meditation, conceptual thinking around connecting ideas to the outcome and colour/meaning, and then the to and fro process of the hands on work.
After deciding on and applying a base colour, I then tried many ideas out in my head over a couple of weeks, while praying and while looking at or working on the urn in my studio, but I couldn’t land on an idea that I felt was the right fit. It was challenging!
At last unexpectedly on the second Sunday in July during our RoG worship service I got a picture in my head of a beautiful strong waterfall flowing down into Urnie and then overflowing down Urnie’s outsides onto the floor. It was a wonderful picture of what I wanted to convey. So I used the paint – many colours of the spectrum of light – to pour down over the urn to create the effect of the overflow. The scripture that came to mind was verse 5 of Psalm 23 ‘You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows’. Even in the presence of our enemies God abundantly cares and provides for us, supplying all that we need.
The base colour is ultramarine blue. Ultramarine (name meaning ‘beyond the sea’) in Christianity is a spiritual colour, it was the finest and most expensive blue used by Renaissance painters. It was often used for the robes of the Virgin Mary, and symbolised holiness and humility.”
