An area of storytelling that I know very limited amount about is the realm of painting. In my experience, it seems like a hefty task to be able to depict the meaning behind most paintings, at least when an untrained eye is gazing upon it. The collaboration between painting and faith can be extensively difficult because depicting with words is already difficult, but the purpose of life through colors on a canvas is simply a task that I cannot wrap my mind around. Luckily for us, we have people such as Makoto Fujimura to do just that, depict the foundation of our life, the four gospels, in the form of paintings.
A quick background is in order before we dive into his work called “The Four Gospel Frontispieces”. Fujimura’s style is a fusion between fine arts and abstract expressionism, combined with the Nihonga, the traditional Japanese art, and Kacho-ga, or bird-and-flower painting tradition. In 2014, Fujimura was awarded the ‘2014 Religion and the Arts’ award, an award given to artist, performer, critic, curator, or scholar that has made significant contributions to the understanding of the relationship between art and religion. To summarize, he is exactly the type of storyteller/artist that A Short Story hopes to highlight through this blog.
Contrary to what the title of this series of paintings might portray, there are actually five paintings in the series. The titles are:
– Charis-Kairos (The Tears of Christ)

Charis (Grace) Kairos (Time), takes the methods I developed for my Soliloquiesseries which exhibited my large scale works with Modernist master Georges Rouault’s paintings. Taking Rouault’s indelible images as a cue, I decided to start with a dark background, to illumine the darkness with prismatic colors. I write in the introduction to the Four Gospels‘ project by Crossway:
– Matthew – Consider the Lilies


– Luke – Prodigal God
“The title of this work, based on a well known tale of the lost son

– John – In the Beginning

Due to my lack of knowledge, I am not going to even attempt to break down these masterpieces created by Makoto Fujimura, but I will ask that you may recognize the bridge that Fujimura is attempting to gap with his artwork. Art is all about interpretation, and these pieces of art are full of it, whether you are consciously or subconsciously thinking about them. Fujimura has loads to say outside the realm of his paintings, so be sure to check out what he has to say.
Continue searching for the beauty and glory in all things. Art is transformative and just like our creator, we are supposed to be creating. To seperate art and religion is to say we do not resemble the creative qualities of God. Keep creating, keep telling stories, keep seeking our deeper purposed within this grand narrative.