[Isaiah 49:1a] 

You have known me since before I was born. You call me forth by name. This image was painted while Nathan Rousu was leading worship. The idea in my mind was a figure with up-turned face in worship. I wanted the hands to echo the face giving a kind of posture of supplication. “Have your way God.” The music led me to to work with water moving around the figure with flowing reflection. The painting started to run and so I turned it so it would move horizontally, which produced an interesting sense of movement like a gentle breath moving towards and through the figure from right to left. I call the image Breath. When God calls us by name, it is like the breath of God cleansing us. The word for ‘name’ and ‘breath’ in Hebrew is the same word, ’Shem’. For the Hebrew, the character of a person is found in their breath. In response to our longing for God, God calls upon that character from within us that He alone has shaped. 

“Before I was born the Lord called me; from my mother’s womb he has spoken my name.”