When I created this piece, I was in the midst of packing up my apartment to move and I had already placed my brush-holder into a large cardboard box beside my easel. Instead of reaching in the box and grabbing a few out, I decided on a whim to rip off a piece of the box and use it as my only way to spread paint on the canvas in front of me. So I placed blobs of paint across the canvas in no particular order and began spreading it across with the cardboard, excited to see the marriage of the colors together.
This has become my favorite method of painting and is one that I still use quite often in my creative career. I feel as though it represents me well as I strive to approach ordinary things as extraordinary vessels in all things!

When I moved off to college and left my conservative household, I began battling with my relationship with God in a lot of different ways. I was raised in church and was told what was 'right' and what was 'wrong' in regards to living life as a "good" Christian. As I began to push back on a lot of the things I was taught as a child, I realized that the one thing I was never really "taught" was how to pray and that my relationship with God was suffering because of my lackluster prayer life. I'm not sure if it's because I was no longer hearing the daily prayers of my parents or because I hadn't found a church home in my college town yet, but I became extremely insecure in my prayer life and decided that silence was easier than trying.
That was, until I was reading the Bible one day and my heart rested on verses 18-19 of Ephesians 6: "And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people. Pray also for me, that whenever I speak, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel."
I began to pray to God in all kinds of ways - as a friend talking to a friend, as a daughter calling her Father, as a fellow creator sharing in craft, as an angry woman yelling at her Offender, etc. And it wasn't until I began talking to God as He exists in every form to me that I felt the freedom to truly create what was in my heart, including this piece. When I look at this painting, it reminds me that prayer exists in so many ways, shapes, forms, colors - that there is no wrong or right way to converse with the Holy - as long as you are "praying in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests".
This piece exists to show the beauty in a colorful prayer life and I hope that it is an encouragement to all who crosses its path because, truthfully, this painting exists as my way of making known the mystery of the Gospel.

Morgan Alisha Glenn Greenhaw, painter