The Divine, Or So It Was

God’s country, countries, county, community, calamity. This deep, ritualistic connection to the Beyond and a great dissonance to it that can be felt through all human beings. Here we are, the end of 2024, having witnessed or experienced great hurt and love in recent times. Sometimes, whatever god is believed in feels potently present or distinctly absent. We make do, we always have. I often see a sign in the Boston metropolitan area, it reads “Everything is going to be okay.” So it was such a painfully truthful statement. Humanity persists, despite its longing for progress, truth, equity, love in trying times. The spiritual artwork in this exhibition lean toward this longing for truth and understanding of one’s religious or spiritual understanding of the world. These works exemplify contemporary spiritual artwork from many understandings and backgrounds. They connect to one another through threads of light and hurt, peace and despair. I am not a religious expert. I am not a priest, I am not a deacon. I am but a person who exists with a history of religious practices and an interest in this very dichotomy represented in spiritual artwork. Religion presents both a possible answer to death and a reason to exist. The art in this exhibition explores this, looking at the deeply rooted love and passion for each artists’ spirituality, as well as a perspective that shifts toward doubt. In this, there will be moments of peace and discord, such as life. There is the sense of the divine, or so it was, such a beautiful cataclysmic human experience of understanding. — Jeff Smudde