“lonzo guardian” by ray dirks |
My art and faith are deeply entwined, wound tightly around the simple words: “created in God’s image.” My subjects are mostly people from countries Westerners typically stereotype in negative terms, or know next to nothing about. I feel called to portray common people with respect, as people of dignity, as brothers and sisters created in the image of God, each equally loved by our Creator.
As I travel the world, I ask to stay with ordinary families, to experience their daily lives as much as an outsider is able so we get to know each other to the point of seeing past our differences. I want to listen, taste, feel the place. I want to discover our commonalities and share stories of love and loss, joy and pain, family, faith. My art comes from these experiences.
I truly love to create art. I love and cherish the experiences that bring me closer to the point of creation.
Ray Dirks is curator at the Mennonite Heritage Centre Gallery on the campus of Canadian Mennonite University, Winnipeg. He is also a painter, photographer, and writer. His coffee table book, In God’s Image: A Global Anabaptist Family, was completed in cooperation with Mennonite World Conference. Dirks and his wife, Katie, worked for Mennonite Brethren Mission and Service International in the DR Congo for two years in the 1980s. Since then, he has worked in approximately 30 countries, half in Africa. In 2002, due to his African work, he was invited to be artist-in-residence at the Overseas Ministries Study Center and a research fellow at the Yale Divinity School, both in New Haven, Connecticut.
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