I am often asked about the role that faith plays in my work. My response is to question how anyone can separate the two.  In my journey as an artist and conservationist, I have been blessed to be able to weave together a very broad spectrum of spiritual inspirations, some more apparent than others.  While I have questioned the painful passages, I have never stopped believing in the purpose of my work, because I have never ceased to be inspired by the beauty of all life. Following that muse, with a great deal of  blind faith, has taken me on a spiritual odyssey that eventually brought me to the music program and Tacheria course at St Philips.

 Whether it was intentional or not, I have to credit the absolute lack of parental pressure to conform to any one religious orientation for allowing my spirituality to emerge holistically in response to the changing times in which we live.  I was born in Philadelphia in 1957, into a marriage of two families that were many generations from Pennsylvania – the eastern woodland forest.  Though we rarely attended church services as a family, my father pontificated endlessly about great Quaker ancestors, while my brothers were sent to the Episcopal Academy, where he had gone too. My mother never spoke about organized religion, but she, like my father, was a lover and nurturer of life.

 I had a world aside from my family in the school that I was sent to – the Baldwin School for Girls – where I started in kindergarten and spent the next 11 years.  While it had fabulous arts and music, there was no declared spiritual overtone there either. One of my closest friends was Jewish. It was through friends’ families from this school that I became interested in the Episcopal Church, and wound up getting confirmed at Church of the Redeemer in Bryn Mawr.  It was here that I experienced my first conscious spiritual leadership in the Reverend Timothy Pickering, whose fiery sermons moved me to my very core.

 Equally as powerful an inspiration, however, was my exposure from early childhood to the culture of the Pennsylvania Dutch.  My maternal grandfather had a farm in the heart of Amish country, where my aunt lived, and our frequent forays to visit her gave me an inside view into a world where people lived without electricity or automobiles, who harnessed the power of magnificent animals – draft horses – to plow and sow and harvest their own food crops.  These families glowed with happiness. This was my first true example of the power of faith – of life lived by faith.

 My father was the pre-eminent portraitist in Philadelphia, and I watched many a notable face take form on the canvas;  presidents, generals, head nurses, debutantes. Some were modest, and some were filled with vanity. Despite their proud appearances, I also saw many superficialities and personal failings within this echelon, and could not help but contrast the dysfunctions of this world with the health and harmony that I had witnessed in the Amish world. It was as though the curtain had been pulled away, like Toto and the Wizard of Oz, to expose something elemental about the human condition.  Grappling with this dichotomy inspired what would turn out to be a lifetime of exploration into the integrity of land-based cultures.

 I went to an Episcopal boarding School in New Hampshire for my last 3 years of high school – St Paul’s – where choral singing was central, and I learned about all of the worlds’ religions in the core curriculum course:  Introduction to Religious Studies. I found myself leaning towards eastern religion – Buddhism and Taoism. This was in the 1970’s, as the environmental movement was taking form, and as the horrific plight of wildlife around the world became increasingly exposed, I began to lose respect for certain aspects of my culture of origin, whose arrogance and denial was allowing the extinction of species to occur.  I subsequently chose to tailor my education to attaining the knowledge I felt was crucial to being a fully conscious human.

 So instead of accepting an ivy league scholarship, I chose to study agriculture and conservation science at Sterling School in Vermont, where I worked with draft horses extensively.  Then I went to Europe and worked on a family scale dairy farm in Norway. Then I headed West to attend colleges in Colorado and Oregon, studying anthropology, and working for the US Forest Service in Oregon.  Like my ancestors before me, I anchored my life and identity in a new frontier, embracing what I considered to be sacred.

 When my creative interests turned to painting, I moved to New York City to study with my chosen mentor, Frank Mason, who opened another window to the divine as he taught me how to bathe a form in light, using the ancient mediums of paint and charcoal.  I also worked for a major art magazine, lectured at the Museum of Modern Art, and began to connoisseur opera.  

 Eventually I needed an environment that was more conducive to creativity – and that turned out to be the Sonoran Desert. Disillusioned by the decadence of the art world, I turned my skills in pictorial realism towards the purpose of interpretation of natural resources – doing illustration and graphic design for conservation agencies throughout the Sonoran Desert Bioregion. Of particular reward was being able to work with the indigenous cultures, (5 nations), whose spirituality was anchored harmoniously within the challenging desert environment.

 Another culture from which I have gleaned great wisdom is the tribal rainforest Indians of lowland Ecuador, whose belief systems are also organically intertwined with an understanding and reverence for their environment.  In my time among these peoples, the sophistication and bravery with which tribal elders took on the issues of the modern world was simply staggering.

 Taking the question of culture one step further led me to the world of primatology. Reading Jane Goodall’s spiritual biography, “Reason for Hope’ , was a perfect epiphany. I realized both how much we could learn from the remaining wild cultures of chimps, and also felt suddenly galvanized within a global community of like-minded believers. Her story integrates her Christian upbringing with the mystical union she experiences in nature – which is my story as well - and it was through her lessons that I came to fully appreciate the teachings of Christ.

 Looking for further spiritual community, and to get the art of choral music back into my life, I finally followed the invitation of Peter Cheney to come to St Philips.  In some ways, this was a return to my culture of origin, and I was unprepared to discover how much it had changed in my absence. To be able to return after 30 years to the beauty of singing again is a gift beyond words, and critical creative counterbalance to my visual work.  Just as importantly, the opportunity to attend the Tacheria School for Interfaith Spiritual Directors allowed me finally to share my multicolored evolution with a group of equally diverse seekers, and to develop an outward voice for the inward being.

 While the next step in my journey has taken me back to a rural setting, the grasslands of Elgin, I do my best to continue my participation in the St Philips community, and am endlessly grateful for all of the love and guidance that has come to me through various members of this church.  My current work with native grasses speaks once gain to the elemental beauty of creation – celebrating both the intricate diversity of this overlooked plant world, and also the role of wise human stewardship in healing our damaged landscapes.  It is a return to fine art, and seeks to restore the role of art as visionary vehicle in our culture today.  My faith may not be quite so blind at this point, but the muse, I believe, will remain an eternal mystery.

 Written by

Matilda Essig

2009