Psalm 67

$400.00

Completed: October, 2015
Image size: 15.25” x 20”
Edition Size: 100 Prints
Paper: Somerset Enhanced 330 GSM
Archival 100% Cotton-Rag Paper
Media: Giclee Fine Art Print 

Swanson’s signature is printed on the lower right margin of the paper and the prints are individually numbered by the Studio.

Description

On a beautiful cool morning, as the sun rises, the sky lightens and rays of sunlight cause the ripened fruit to glow, the farmers begin to work. The fruit is a gift of their labor. Some tend to the plants and others the soil.

They gather the blessings of an abundant harvest. They work together to support their families. With gratitude, they share their harvest with their community.

Our God has blessed the earth
with a wonderful harvest!
– Psalm 67:6

As long as humans have existed, we’ve turned to art to express the inexpressible.
Mircea Eliade writes that, “sacred art seeks to represent the invisible by means of the visible. . . . Even in archaic and ‘folk’ cultures, lacking any philosophical system and vocabulary, the function of sacred art was the same: it translated religious experience and a metaphysical conception of the world and of human existence into a concrete, representational form. This translation was not considered wholly the work of man: the divinity also participated by revealing himself to man and allowing himself to be perceived in form or figure.”

Richard Rohr, Art and Poetry, Sept. 30, 2015

PSALM 67 represents to me something of what this description points to, a revelation of something deeper. The abundance of the harvest touches something in me.
-Br. Ignatius Sudol, O.H.

PSALM 67- Image History of Gardening and Planting

A few of the paintings and sketches which helped me to develop PSALM 67.

 

 

 

 

TREE PLANTING
Serigraph and Poster
1982-1987

 

TREE PLANTING
Serigraph
1974

 

TREE PLANTING
Serigraph with Hand Painted Embellishments
1982

 

TREE PLANTING
Posters
1987

 

 

 

 

GARDENERS
painting
1989

 

GARDENERS
Acrylic on Canvas Painting
1989

 

 

 

 

 

 

PSALM 85
Painting and Serigraph
1990-2003

 

Psalm 85
Painting
1990

 

PSALM 85
Returned Painting Further Enhanced
1998

 

PSALM 85
Serigraph
April 22, 2003

 

 

 

 

ABRAHAM AND ISSAC
Details from Top Border
1995

 

ABRAHAM AND ISSAC (detail)
Painting
1995

 

ABRAHAM AND ISSAC (detail)
Painting
1995

 

ABRAHAM AND ISSAC (detail)
Painting
1995

 

 

 

 

THE LAST SUPPER
Details from Borders
2009

 

THE LAST SUPPER (details)
Serigraph
2009

 

THE LAST SUPPER (details)
Line Work for Printing Serigraph
2009

 

 

 

 

THE GARDENERS: PSALM 67
Painting
July, 2015

 

THE GARDENERS: PSALM 67
John August Swanson Painting In the Studio
July 20, 2015

 

THE GARDENERS: PSALM 67
John August Swanson Painting In the Studio
Juy 20, 2015

 

THE GARDENERS: PSALM 67
Painting
July 31, 2015

PSALM 67- Giclee Printing
In February, 2014, the John August Swanson Studio borrowed Mr. Swanson’s 1989 painting, The Gardeners from the collection of Harold and Bonnie Shimmin. The original painting was scanned at 512 dots per inch, at ArtScans Studio in Los Angeles. This file was digitally lightened and enhanced under the direction of John August Swanson, and a single giclee was printed on January 21, 2015.Over the course of the next six months, John August Swanson created a new, brighter, and more elaborate painting from the work.On July 31, 2015, the newly completed painting was sent to ArtScans Studio to be scanned at 512 dots per inch,. The digital file was then delivered to the Swanson Studio on August 5, 2015.On August 7, 2015, the enhanced digital file was sent to Kolibri Art Studio in Torrance, CA, and a proof was printed. Under the supervision of John August Swanson, additional color changes and details, both scanned hand drawn and digital, were added to the digital file.
The final and completed giclee image file was sent to Kolibri Art Studio on September 9, 2015 for printing.On October 2, 2015, the first twenty giclee prints were delivered and approved by John August Swanson.

 

 

 

 

THE GARDENERS

1989-2015

 

 

Scan of 1989 Painting
THE GARDENERS
Acrylic, 1989

 

Lightened and Digitally Enhanced Scan

THE GARDENERS
January 21, 2015

 

Photo Of Completed 2015 Painting

THE GARDENERS: PSALM 67
July 31, 2014

 

 

 

 

PSALM 67

Scan to Final Giclee

 

8/5/15 – 9/9/2015

 

 

Scan of Completed 2015
THE GARDENERS: PSALM 67
August 5, 2015

 

Initial Color Changes Made to Scan

PSALM 67
August 7, 2015

 

Completed Giclee File

PSALM 67
September 9, 2015

Reflections on PSALM 67

David Farley

California-Pacific Conference United Methodist Church
Director of Justice and Compassion Ministries

For those who work on the land, for those who plant the seed,
For those who work with their hands to bring us the food we need
Thanks be to God and blessings on all who labor.
Thanks be to God and justice for all our neighbors.
This is my prayer.

 

Saint Isidore the Farmer
Garden Blessings Chaplet

 

 Father and Divine Creator, we thank You for the example of St. Isidore the Farmer and ask for Your blessing on our crops and labor, as we walk humbly in his footsteps and toil in our gardens and fields. Instill in us the virtues of patience and industry, so that in the evening of life we may yield an abundant harvest of good works and worthy sacrifice. We ask this through Christ, Your Son and Our Lord. Amen.

 

Carl Jung

(artwork-
Downwards As Well, 1972
by Sr. Corita Kent)

 

No noble, well grown tree ever disowned its dark roots, for it grows
not only upwards but downwards as well.
Downwards As Well, 1972    Downwards As Well, 1972

 

David Gill

Art-Nonsense
and other Essays
Though not every man is called to the life of religion, every man is called to love of God and every man is called to give love to the work of his hands; every man is called to be an artist.

 

Wendell Berry
The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture

The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.

 

 

Richard Rohr,
Art and Poetry,
September 30, 2015

As long as humans have existed, it seems that we’ve turned to art to express the inexpressible. Mircea Eliade (1907-1986), Romanian historian of religion, writes that “sacred art seeks to represent the invisible by means of the visible. . . . Even in archaic and ‘folk’ cultures, lacking any philosophical system and vocabulary, the function of sacred art was the same: it translated religious experience and a metaphysical conception of the world and of human existence into a concrete, representational form. This translation was not considered wholly the work of man: the divinity also participated by revealing himself to man and allowing himself to be perceived in form or figure.”

PSALM 67 represents to me something of what this description points to, a revelation of something deeper. The abundance of the harvest touches something in me.
-Br. Igantius Sudol, O.H.

 

 

Leave This
Rabindranath Tagore,
1861-1941

Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut? Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee!

He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground and where the path-maker is breaking stones. He is with them in sun and in shower, and his garment is covered with dust. Put off thy holy mantle and even like him come down on the dusty soil!

Deliverance? Where is this deliverance to be found? Our master himself has joyfully taken upon him the bonds of creation; he is bound with us all for ever.

Come out of thy meditations and leave aside thy flowers and incense! What harm is there if thy clothes become tattered and stained? Meet him and stand by him in toil and in sweat of thy brow.

A Prayer Before Nature
Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, 1772-1810

Calligraphy by John August Swanson

A Turkish Muslim woman
describes her
prayer ritual
(Salat)

Calligraphy by John August Swanson

 

 

Wandering
Hermann Hesse,
1877-1962

“Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.”

“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farm boy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.”

Additional information

Weight 3 lbs
Dimensions 36 × 7 × 7 in