The Narrow Way

This is one of my recent paintings. I had wanted to paint something following my retreat last year in October on the theme of the narrow way, but failed to develop an image that I was happy with. During the retreat I had thought quite a bit about the narrow way - which I defined as simply following Jesus, but also the pathway to growth, to transformation, to gradual healing. I even painted a simple watercolour piece on the retreat, but following the retreat I never managed to create something I liked and so I abandoned the idea of painting the narrow way. That is until a few weeks ago when inspiration struck. I was praying when I had this image of a dark canvas with a narrow path of gold going across it - ‘the narrow way’ I thought to myself! Unusually for me, I took straight to canvas, layering different colours as the background for life is full of light and darkness. I then painted over with a dark green colour, representing land but also the difficulties of life. I didn’t have a clear plan (again very unusual for me), I was just taking it one step at a time. My next step involved sanding back the green to see some of the layers beneath shining through, giving the background a distressed kind of look. Then I was ready to add the gold. Rather than paint the narrow way as a line, I thought I’d paint it as a spiral, as in our spiritual growth we often revisit the same challenges over and over, but from a slightly different place to last time. I did sketch out a couple of spirals before committing to the canvas, as I knew this step could easily ruin the whole thing. I didn’t want the spiral to be perfect as spiritual growth isn’t perfect, and of course the line itself had to be narrow. I painted a circle at the centre of the spiral, the end of the narrow way. This is as perfect as I could get it as it represents how our destination (the end of the narrow way) is being united with God. The gold is actually gilding flakes rather than paint - something I’ve now used in a number of paintings. After three days, the painting was finished (it probably was no more than 3 hours in total), and it is still a surprise to me. I don’t quite know where it came from, but I’m glad to now have a representation of The Narrow Way on my wall.