Craig Hawkins is well known for emotionally intense paintings and drawings of biblically based contextualized figures. His technique relates to that of modernist artists such as Jim Dine, an acknowledged influence. Hawkins too creates imagery through line rather than color relying on the sensitivity of a mark to define form. His metaphorical images also flirt with a greater reality, as the vivid subjects reflect a deeper content outside and inside meditative compositions. There is something both depraving and redeeming about Hawkins juxtaposed subject and content. Do these paintings reflect a social affinity to be self-exhalting or man's inherant search and revelation of God? Are they a biblical representation of Holy scripture or a depiction of the world's meaningless interests? After solving each puzzle and experiencing the meaning of such works of art you have the need to praise it.
If I could completely communicate what I experience in life with words, painting would be pointless. My goal is to take a truth and imagine it, and that is a beautiful process full of both frustration and joy. That is worship. It requires positioning yourself around what you love in order to benefit and receive joy and satisfaction from it. This is most easily seen with the love of money, but I believe glutting one's self on God produces something much more... a full, complete life. God is my true life, and I hope to reflect that through my art be it by skill, craftmanship, creativity, meaning, aesthetics, or content. In any case, it's making art to the glory of God.
My vision at it's heart is to take the world or worldly things and to reveal truth. That I may focus on God's fingerprints and pull back that layer of lies, sin, iniquities, or depravity that man mistakenly makes his habitation, and to point at the presence of truth. May truth reveal that habitation for what it is: evil disguised as happiness. I long to give directions on how to get to God by displaying His glory. I want to be an artist who paints for the honor of the one who sent Him, a man of truth. All my paintings consist of a lesson learned through God's word, a truth pondered with paint. Together all of this is experience ..ed in mark making, metaphors and love. I trust and hope that, by the end of my life, my paintings could be seen as Psalm-like visual fine art. Psalm-like visual art dealing with fears, joys, hope, love, questions, trust, dependence, desperations, praise, security, and teaching all for God. I do not make nor intend to produce propaganda. I long to take truth and imagine it. This action is what I believe to be the integrity of art and worship. I desire to reflect the one who made me. To me that means making good art. God's definition of good, not '' That's good but this is better'' but instead, '' [He]...looked over all He had made and He saw that it was excellent in every way.''
Genesis 1: 31
