Art and Liminal Space
August 2, 2022 2:07 pm
Liminal Space Art is a freshly painted canvas is my map for understanding where I am in time and space. This map gives unique perspective. It’s a map that creative expression gives to any art maker—objectivity that most can’t find a voice for. Art makers are left with some kind of work that lets them reflect on where they are at any given time and in any given space. Their work shows them where they have been, where they are, and where they are going. Art itself can capture our place in a liminal space.
With great unease, I took on a daunting task. I tried to catch it (liminality) with my words and painter’s hands—to express this intangible, abstract and fleeting thing. This is why I wrote this book about art and liminality. I chose this rocky path that I now pray will lead you and me to transformation. May we hover in the “Not Knowing” of the “In-Between” and then stand at the threshold of “What’s Next”—peering in to see a new place taking shape and glimpsing the fruits of crossing over that threshold and into something new.
To better understand the great lessons we learned while we waited in the powerful “In-Between” would be a most amazing thing. Precious would it be to see this strange liminal space that most often keeps us in one place yet takes us on journeys to where we never thought we’d go. By the grace of God, may the meek pages of this book help us better understand these transient, ephemeral, and undefinable things.
Each time my pen hits the paper, I feel a surge of anxiety. I wasn’t sure how to start this book, and I had no idea what the end of it would look like. I was stuck in a place I call “Not Knowing.” I had ideas about how this process would take shape, but I knew they were probably not accurate. How could I possibly know anything about the end of something while in the middle of it? How could I know how to get somewhere without some kind of map that lead to my destination? What would I look for, and where would I seek it? I did know I was reaching for something which was pulling me out of the space I was in and towards “Someplace New.” This place of being pulled from both sides while waiting in the middle, I have learned, has a name. It’s called “liminal space.” It was “this place” that drove me to write a book about the “Not Knowing.” For those who want to better understand the liminal experience, here is a “map” that might lead you to some answers.
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