Keeper of Cycles: On Faith, Art, and Renewal
Stories that splinter, grow, and bloom beyond conformity
Excerpt:
Religion begins as story but often hardens into law. Art has been used the same way — to awe, to scare, to enforce. But unlike religion, art has a way of splintering back into freedom. My own paintings of trees, blooms, and cosmic skies are my way of telling stories that don’t conform, but invite.
Picture this
Imagine if all art looked the same. Imagine if the only paintings allowed were abstract. Or only landscapes. Or only portraits.
At first, it might feel orderly. Predictable. Easy. But soon, it would become unbearable. Expression would wither. Voices would vanish. The canvas of our collective life would be reduced to a single shade.
Faith as story, not monopoly
Religion, like art, tells the story of existence. But these stories don’t arise in isolation — they splinter and reshape as people move, marry, and form new communities.
A flood remembered in one place becomes a flood retold in another, altered with new details, adapted to new landscapes, woven into new rituals. It’s like the old telephone game: a story whispered through generations changes as it travels, but its core experience remains recognizable.
Floods, rebirth, heavens, origin myths — they echo across cultures not because one faith “borrowed” them, but because human beings were living through the same elemental events, then shaping them into the languages and symbols of their time.
That’s the beauty of difference. Many stories, one shared human experience — splintered, re-imagined, and expressed through culture and faith.
Religion as paradox — story and conformity
But here’s the paradox: religion is both storytelling and conformity. At its best, it carries memory — tales of flood, rebirth, community, morality. At its worst, it freezes those stories into doctrine.
What began as symbolic becomes literal. What began as shared becomes legislated. Religion offers rules that help people coexist, but those same rules often demand sameness. Faith becomes law, and difference becomes threat.
Art as paradox — conformity and expression
Art has walked this same paradox. Much of the earliest European art was commissioned by the church — frescoes, icons, stained glass — designed to awe, to instruct, and to scare people away from “pagan” practices. For centuries, monks and priests were among the only ones who could pay artists.
And literacy was a privilege. Most ordinary people couldn’t read Scripture or doctrine, so images became their Bible. Saints, demons, floods, heavens, hells — all painted larger than life to conform belief through vision when words couldn’t reach. Art wasn’t just decoration; it was legislation in color and form.
And yet art never stayed confined. Even in cathedrals, human expression slipped through — in the curve of a face, the shimmer of a color, the individuality of a hand at work. Over time, art broke away from its strict religious role: the Renaissance, Impressionism, abstraction — each movement splintered toward freedom.
That’s the difference I see: religion tends to calcify stories into law. Art can be used for conformity, but it has an unstoppable tendency to bloom again into individuality.
A personal encounter
Not long ago, someone dismissed me because I said I wasn’t religious: “What could you possibly know about Jesus?” they asked.
The irony is, of course, everyone knows Jesus — just as everyone knows Picasso or Van Gogh. You can understand their place in the story without painting like them. You can respect their influence while still making work that speaks in your own voice.
What troubles me is when someone takes a figure — whether Jesus, Buddha, Odin, Freyja, or any revered prophet — and turns them into a puppet for their own agenda. It would be like someone a thousand years from now saying, “This is what Kelly would want, so we must all do it in her name.” It strips away autonomy and replaces it with assumption.
I don’t paint to be Van Gogh; I paint to be Kelly. In the same way, Jesus should be allowed to be Jesus. Buddha should be Buddha. Freyja should be Freyja. None of them deserve to be reduced to enforcers of conformity. The truth is, none of us today know them. We only interpret fragments handed down across centuries. And when someone insists they know a revered figure better than anyone else — maybe even better than the figure knew themselves — that becomes less about faith and more about power.
My art as living story
Religion, myth, and art all carry ancestral memory. They hold fragments of what people experienced — floods, births, deaths, mysteries — and retell them in new forms.
I’ve noticed this happening in my own work. Lately, without planning, I’ve begun framing my cosmic, floral, and fauna designs with branching trees and leaves — almost like stained glass made of nature. At first, I thought it was an aesthetic choice. But now I see how deeply it connects to these very conversations: the World Tree, cycles of renewal, the way stories branch and intertwine.
I don’t “decide” to paint these forms. They emerge intuitively, as if carried in me. They feel like echoes of the same stories humanity has told for millennia — stories of life and death, darkness and light, destruction and renewal.
My paintings don’t seek to conform anyone to one meaning. They tell a story — of blooms, skies, creatures, and cycles. They share my encounters with the world and invite others to bring their own.
Closing – Diversity as beauty
Faith and art, at their best, don’t demand conformity. They tell stories of existence. They remind us that difference is not error, but expression.
The truth is, no single brushstroke can capture the universe. No single faith can tell the whole story of being human. We need many hands on the canvas, many stories in the circle, many ways of seeking meaning.
Because difference isn’t a threat — it’s the very texture of beauty.
Splinter & Bloom — a continuing story of art, memory, and meaning