Three Artists: a Songwriter, a Trapeze Artist and a Painter

My artistic journey has been a series of awakenings, where I recognized certain aspects about art for the learning benefit, improvement of my craft and my ability to feel closer to God when I paint. I have always known about "the zone", but never before categorized it as a special place that every artist yearns for and works toward.

My boss, singer/songwriter (and now author) Steve Bell is in that zone when he is onstage sitting alone on a stool, with guitar in hand. He doesn't prepare ahead of time with a set list, but allows the Spirit to lead him in what he sings and speaks. He also encounters the zone when, as he says "a new song comes down the pike". A song can arrive suddenly and be written on a napkin in a restaurant, or can come slowly with the collaboration of others.

In his book "Balance - a story of Faith, Family and Life on the Line", Trapeze artist Nik Wallenda describes the zone as "the place in which God and His glory are manifest everywhere." When I read those lines, naming the concept of "the zone" fell into place for me - a way to describe the feeling an artist has when faith, God's glory and one's gift all collide in a certain space of time.

Non-believers certainly do experience the zone in their work, but as a Christian artist, I believe as Steve and Nik do, that the Spirit manifests His glory at that time. Nik describes the experience in the zone as "moving by instinct, by gentle feeling - nothing is forced, the rhythm determined by the motion that you neither create nor fight."

The other evening I experienced the zone as I painted the hair portion of a difficult, detailed portrait. It's a feeling that time is suspended and goes very quickly, progress is made, and one makes decisions by instinct about the next stroke or colour to use. Everything seems to come together and in one other recent painting I had the experience that it "painted itself".

"The zone" is not limited to the experience of artists...it is found in the daily life of every human being, whether that person is cooking dinner or writing an exam.

Quotes by Nik Wallenda used with permission from the book, Balance: A Story of Faith, Family, and Life on the Line by Nik Wallenda with David Ritz