This painting began in July 2010 when I was first able to visit the ruins of the Cathedral in Port Au Prince, Haiti. At that time the property was gated and uncleared of the rubble and deceased. After returning to my studio at home, I began the first iteration of the full size painting, using the ubiquitous umbrellas of Haiti as a metaphor of life among death.
In the summer of 2011 I returned to the Cathedral with the my friend and colleague Ned Reade. By this time the rubble had been removed and we were able to paint from inside the Cathedral. I spent much of my time sorting through the small piles of remaining debris and collecting discarded “treasures” of the stained glass windows. It became a game to the local children, who sent me home with a pile of several pounds of glass. I vowed to myself to honor these sacred shards somehow in a work that would be a worthy tribute to these precious and grieving Haitians.
I embedded shards and crushed fragments of the Cathedral’s glass into the painting itself, praying over Haiti with what I might describe as a weeping hope.
The true “Church” was never a building. It is God’s people, His Body, His Bride. It cannot be destroyed by man, by natural disaster, or hell itself. The Church in Haiti has a vibrant and zealous faith that puts to shame thespiritual ruins of first world nations.
The seven spheres of influence are so interconnected, that to see education reach its potential in Haiti, economic stability, family dynamics, and political policy need to shelter its fragile nature. Yet a good education is perhaps the single greatest asset a Haitian youth can gain to equip them to play their part in the work of restoration. Our global and digital world provides unprecedented opportunity for a young, well educated Haitian who rightly understands where they stand in place and time. There is an untapped paradise, a hidden Eden, at their doorstep.
I painted “Education” before I had come across the concept of the seven spheres, and perhaps it was symbolic of the strategic importance education holds for sustainable change in Haiti. The “Seven Spheres” or “Seven Mountains” of influence spring from a miraculous meeting in 1975 between Bill Bright (Founder of Campus Crusade) and Loren Cunningham (Founder of Youth With A Mission). Both men brought the same list of seven things to a meeting, having each independently received a revelation of from the Lord that lasting social change must address Education, Government, Religion, Business, Family, Media, & Arts and Entertainment. They were stunned to realize the other had excitedly brought the exact same list of seven, and this blueprint of empowering agents of change in each sphere became a pivotal strategy for their international ministries.
May the children of Haiti come to know who they really are and what they were born to become!
During my July 2010 return to Haiti after the earthquake, just as in my time in post war Bosnia, I was struck by the juxtaposition of the horror of destruction, and the casual daily rituals that don’t get the opportunity to stop. In the midst of grief, food still needs to be prepared, laundry done... life just goes on amidst the ruin. As an outsider, I just want to shout, ‘Hey, doesn’t the world see what’s happening here!? Won’t someone help? Can’t we set this right before we move on!?” But no, life trudges on over and around the rubble.
I am always pursuing that thin space between representation and abstraction in my painting. While some of these panels are more realistic in appearance and others more conceptual, I particularly enjoy the magic moments of thick paint like these when abstract marks congeal into recognizable images.
Who among all these amazing Haitian people will rise above passivity, apathy, and hopelessness to be a champion of renewal for their country? I am constantly amazed by the inner strength and hope of my Haitian Family in the face of overwhelming adversity. They have a wellspring of faith and courage that humbles me, and despite economic difference, it is apparent that I am the poorer man.
This panel is my tribute to Daniel and Marjorie Jean, my inspiration and connection to Haiti. Daniel was a “Sphere Champion” of Haiti long before I was aware of the concept, sacrificially serving his nation as a healer of the torn fabric of Family. It is Daniel, a Haitian orphan himself, who is uniquely anointed to reach the orphans of his country. By asking him, “what dreams has God laid on your heart for Haiti?”, my family began to meaningfully partner with the work in Haiti by empowering him as a sphere champion.
I met Daniel in Jamaica as he finished his Bible degree in 2000, confessing even then his calling to return to Haiti and minister to the street children. From 2000 to 2008 I got letters that he had rescued and adopted 5 children, 10 children, 21 children, 60 of the most vulnerable children in his area... and like a modern day George Mueller, was feeding and providing for them entirely by faith and God’s miraculous provision. In 2008 my father Mark and I visited for the first time and were “adopted by orphans” into this beautiful Family. Our family responded by drafting TeamOne:27, a non-profit to resource Daniel and other sphere champions. Since 2008, his Family has grown to over 200 adopted children in 3 homes of blessing, and a “Church on Fire” of over 500 community members serving this amazing Family and their entire region.
Daniel and Marjorie are featured in Gold at the top of this tree, with their two biological children in the center, and many of their adopted children symbolically a double image of the growing tree.
Daniel was recognized as a pivotal regional leader when his unshakable integrity and radical generosity provided for his community after the earthquakes of 2010. As one example of his caliber, among many other responsibilities following the earthquake, Daniel managed the construction of over 2500 homes through Catholic Relief Services.
My father, Mark Gillette (Brudda Mark), as president of TeamOne:27, travels to Haiti on a monthly basis to support Daniel. He has worked tirelessly to ship over a dozen containers and buses full of needed resources, fundraise, host American teams, and pilot a for-profit “PermaCrete” business in Haiti to generate self-sustaining resources for Daniel Jean’s Community.
Through our years serving Daniel in Haiti, one thing we have constantly found is that it is not enough to address only one sphere of influence. While we watch Daniel pour his life out for his children and his church, he is constantly undermined by the failed infrastructure of the government, the toxic cycles of Haitian economy, the inadequacy of the system of education, rule of law, etc. To see lasting and sustainable change for Daniel, each of the seven spheres must be working together in healthy unison. These paintings and this conversation were born from our frustration and the perpetual question, “What does it take to restore a nation?”
The first image I saw after the 2010 earthquake was of the collapsed capital building. I remember feeling, at that very first glimpse, that the ruins of the capital had a metaphoric or prophetic weight. I painted this watercolor on site from an SUV in the summer of 2010, and it became the seed for the first painting of Beyond The Ruins. I prayed that the fallen whitewashed facade of the building echoed the deeper fall of injustice, oppression, and corruption beyond the veil.
The final element to be placed on the image was the iconic Haitian symbol of the “Freed Slave” blowing a conch shell, sword in hand and broken shackles on his left ankle. This figure was the final sphere champion for my last painting in the series, “Media,” and it seemed fitting to tie the beginning and end of my project together in a continuous loop by echoing the figure again here. More than that, the figure actually comes from a statue that sits in front of this very capital building, and had been there even when I painted the watercolor of 2010, though I couldn’t see it buried in the tent city of the displaced earthquake victims.
It is hard to appreciate the often invisible value of the rule of law, until you are suddenly and dangerously aware that you have come to a land where there is none.
I tried to imagine what the spiritual overthrow of evil “powers, authorities, and principalities” would look like in the heavenly realms. [Ephesians chapter 6]
I feel like I am often praying in imagery rather than words- that the Lord gives me an image and I get to shape and work with it, or that I offer an image and the Lord gives it back to me “updated”. This co-laboring is a regular experience of my studio time, and some of the greatest highlights in the process are when I realize (usually when someone else points it out) a deeper meaning to the work than I was conscious of or intentionally imposing. I’m left chuckling to myself and painfully aware that God is keeping me humble, letting me know He’s with me, and freeing me from the tendency and desire to take credit. The visual pairing of the serpents in these two panels was one such example. It was only after I felt the Lord give me a vision of the raised medical staff in the hand of the girl that I saw the appropriate pairing of imagery: the “Serpent” of evil and corruption crushed in the first panel, and the medical serpent of healing- held by Moses and referred to by Christ Jesus as a metaphor of himself, held aloft in the second.
The final element to be placed on the image was the iconic Haitian symbol of the “Freed Slave” blowing a conch shell, sword in hand and broken shackles on his left ankle. This figure was the final sphere champion for my last painting in the series, “Media,” and it seemed fitting to tie the beginning and end of my project together in a continuous loop by echoing the figure again here. More than that, the figure actually comes from a statue that sits in front of this very capital building, and had been there even when I painted the watercolor of 2010, though I couldn’t see it buried in the tent city of the displaced earthquake victims.
It is hard to appreciate the often invisible value of the rule of law, until you are suddenly and dangerously aware that you have come to a land where there is none.
I tried to imagine what the spiritual overthrow of evil “powers, authorities, and principalities” would look like in the heavenly realms. [Ephesians chapter 6]
I feel like I am often praying in imagery rather than words- that the Lord gives me an image and I get to shape and work with it, or that I offer an image and the Lord gives it back to me “updated”. This co-laboring is a regular experience of my studio time, and some of the greatest highlights in the process are when I realize (usually when someone else points it out) a deeper meaning to the work than I was conscious of or intentionally imposing. I’m left chuckling to myself and painfully aware that God is keeping me humble, letting me know He’s with me, and freeing me from the tendency and desire to take credit. The visual pairing of the serpents in these two panels was one such example. It was only after I felt the Lord give me a vision of the raised medical staff in the hand of the girl that I saw the appropriate pairing of imagery: the “Serpent” of evil and corruption crushed in the first panel, and the medical serpent of healing- held by Moses and referred to by Christ Jesus as a metaphor of himself, held aloft in the second.
This image was ultimately paired with an answering panel: “Government 2”, which attempts to visualize hope and restoration into the brokenness.
I feel like I am often praying in imagery rather than words- that the Lord gives me an image and I get to shape and work with it, or that I offer an image and the Lord gives it back to me “updated”. This co-laboring is a regular experience of my studio time, and some of the greatest highlights in the process are when I realize (usually when someone else points it out) a deeper meaning to the work than I was conscious of or intentionally imposing. I’m left chuckling to myself and painfully aware that God is keeping me humble, letting me know He’s with me, and freeing me from the tendency and desire to take credit. The visual pairing of the serpents in these two panels was one such example. It was only after I felt the Lord give me a vision of the raised medical staff in the hand of the girl that I saw the appropriate pairing of imagery: the “Serpent” of evil and corruption crushed in the first panel, and the medical serpent of healing- held by Moses and referred to by Christ Jesus as a metaphor of himself, held aloft in the second.
I painted this “Daughter of Haiti” as the champion over the government sphere of influence. She is holding the medical staff, reminiscent of the golden serpent Moses held up to rescue and heal Israel from a plague of venomous snakes. She is mother, queen, and healer... every daughter of Haiti!
The image is riddled with imagery of restored infrastructure: medicine, law, military, roads, sewage, electricity, etc., and serves as a visual reciprocal to the destruction of the first panel. I was seeking to visualize the spiritual process of refinement and restoration in the sphere of government.
Daughters of Haiti Arise!
The entire series contains a theme of “fractals”, which find their ultimate expression in this piece. Embedded within this painting are fractal images of all seven sphere champions from the other paintings. Fractals are objects that can be broken down or built together into new shapes that hold all of the identity of their parts. For example, these triangles can be split into four new triangles, each with the same shape of the whole, and can be infinitely subdivided or combined. I have used this shape throughout the series as a metaphor of God’s Kingdom. The “Bride” or Church universal of Christ is described as being made of each separate believer, who in turn hosts within themselves the Holy Spirit- an exact reflection and full expression of God. So we as individuals, families, faith communities, regions... to the global Church through all time, are Kingdom fractals. We hold the DNA of the Christ’s Kingdom within us, and as we come together in unity through love, we display a glorious Bride.
The Needle of Time
“We are stuck in mortal time, it is the gift and limitation of being human. Like the needle on a record player, we can only live in this ever-passing nanosecond of reality. All time past and all time future is beyond our reach... and we cannot make this needle speed up or jump back, it simply sweeps us steadily along at the rate of this spinning planet. Yet the amazing gift of mortality is this: we are the tip of the needle WRITING THE STORY of history. Historians can look back in wonder on what was and prophets can peer into the dim future seeing glimpses, but we actually inhabit, perpetually, the very edge of reality that is SHAPING eternity. As co-creators with God of this Meta-narrative, we are watched in wonder by a great “Cloud of Witnesses”, the angelic and saintly who are gloriously beyond the constraints of mortal time. But they do not write the story as we do, unaware as we are of eternal purposes unfolding among us in this sunset, this tide, this day’s mundane labor.
Yet Christ also promised his Holy Spirit, God himself, who is at once inhabiting us in mortal time and beyond with the heart of the Father. The Spirit is the tear in the veil, the conduit of access between heaven and earth, and Christ has commissioned us to bring his Kingdom to our world, his original Edenistic design to a fallen creation!"
If you look closely, the stars are the actual July constellations over Haiti: of Hercules standing on the head of Draco the Dragon, symbolizing in Greek mythology the triumph of good over evil, or the Judea-Christian counterpart of the Archangel Michael standing on the head of the Serpent Lucifer.
It was while painting this image that my style and process changed. I discovered many new properties of the paint as I took the time to add layer upon layer of paint, and found a new visual language of multi-valiant imagery, the collision and overlap of multiple images.
By the end of summer 2013 I was exhausted. I was nearing the end of my forth summer working on the series, many of my panels needed final details, and this final “Media” panel just wasn’t coming together. I felt like I was giving birth to something enormous, and the labor pain vacillated between moments of shear wonder and paralyzed tearful sobs laying on my studio floor. On one such afternoon of paralysis, after reaching out to my prayer team and asking for their intercession, I put my frozen brush down and just sat still in listening prayer. I was overwhelmed by an image of a young haitian (I imagined a girl) in the pounding surf of the ocean, head back, blowing a conch shell. I didn’t know what it meant, but I knew it was the Lord’s answer to my prayer.
It evolved into a fractal storm of triangles in chaos theory “waves” congealing into familiar vignettes of Media dissemination.
I decided to go down to my house and get reference images before starting, and was floored to find this figure of the “Freed Slave” was a haitian sculpture right in front of the capital building of Port Au Prince, Haiti. I’d been there multiple times, and never seen it behind the tent cities of earthquake victims! Not only was this a native Haitian symbol bearing the very DNA of what I was trying to communicate, but he was strangely positioned in a near perfect equilateral triangle! I went back up the hill to my studio and collapsed in relief. Though I had “miles to go before I sleep”, the final piece of the puzzle had been revealed! I felt the Father put His hand on my shoulder and gently assure me, “You are going to finish!”
Haiti’s “Business Sphere” is literally in ashes, with over 90% of the population unemployed. The charcoal business has symbolically burned Haiti’s economy with unsustainable practices, effectively stripping the land of trees and causing ecological and meteorological disaster.
Champions of the business sphere will lead Haiti into sustainable practices of agriculture, energy, tourism, and business. Like a bee storing up honey for the benefit of future generations, a champion of business will deny destructive short term gain for a legacy of long term growth.
The central image of “Confession” is the Haitian flag and crest. “Union Fait La Force” translates “Strength in Unity”. The shattering chain below the cannons is symbolic of the breaking of slavery’s bonds in Haitian iconography and is present in the national flag, though I have elevated its prominence here.
Woven into the chain itself are iconic images of a slave ship, a diagram of how slaves were packed inhumanely into the hulls of European vessels, and chained masses marching.
This painting is my confession. I am on my face in humility and repentance on behalf of our nation for the guilt we share in the genocide, slavery, greed, and violence that shaped Haiti’s beginning. The flags of Spain, France, Britain, and the United States drape the ruins and rubble of Haiti’s past. May these chains be broken by our authentic confession and restitution, and may we proceed in the strength of reconciled unity. Let the destined potential of Haiti rise radiantly from the rubble!
Union Fait La Force
The “Arts and Entertainment” sphere of influence holds the pulse of a culture’s values, traditions, and emotions. I am using the unifying image of the triangle again in this panel, only this time as a prism, which when rightly aligned will catch light and refract it into the entire spectrum of beautiful color. I began this painting with that as the metaphor of the role of an artist.
As a mentor and teacher of young artists, I chose to explore a theme in this panel about growing to our full potential as “rightly aligned” artists. Each corner of the central triangle represented to me one of three things I believe is crucial to artistic development:
1)Our personal intimacy with God- and our spiritual/emotional maturity and depth.
2)The excellence and refinement of our artistic skill.
3)Discovering how we uniquely integrate and contribute to community through our artistry.
This image is the only non door currently in the series, and is an expansion of a watercolor I did from memory after an incredible experience of worship. I joined a small congregation who was spending their entire afternoon praising the Lord, a regular rhythm of their routine (puts our American in-and-out 1.25 hr. services to shame!). Despite the fact that nearly all of them had reason to mourn, that nearly all of them had lost homes and immediate family members and/or friends in the 2010 earthquakes just months earlier, they were worshipping with an intensity of passion and faith that was unparalleled!
While I sat in the back sketching, praying, and worshipping... I was struck by the tear in the makeshift tarp roof above, and the dazzling blue sky slicing down into this otherwise overshadowed gathering (to beat the Haitian afternoon heat). I was told that the tarp had torn during worship, and I love the metaphor of this “open heaven” above, God listening with compassion and attention to the cries of his people. Their praise in that place that afternoon was truly “rending the heavens”, and the embodiment of that reality in their roof served as a perfect symbolic foundation for this image! I remember sitting on my bed painting the 9x12” watercolor above from memory while my heart was still stirring from the experience just a few hours before, and the larger oil of “Rend the Heavens” grew from this painted seed.