“Finally, someone has figured out that art with a message can succeed”

Art with a message

2000. Art was at one time a “neglected species” in the Christian world, “but I believe God has Sovereignly decided that now is the time for a Second Renaissance, because we live in a sight and sound generation,” enthuses Ron DiCianni, a Christian artist who heralds from Chicago, Illinois, USA.

Ron believes in the art scenes that there is a turn to art with a “redeeming message”.

“One of my paintings, ‘Safely Home’, was voted one of 1999’s fifty best paintings of that year. A secular magazine, U.S. Art, said, “Finally, someone has figured out that art with a message can succeed.”

Ron’s passion had always been to work and use his gift for the Kingdom of God, “serving the King of kings. What I do now causes even the best work I used (in his secular career) to get to pale in comparison”. His inspiration for art is predominantly the Golden Age of Illustration as well as artists like Norman Rockwell, N.C. Wyeth and Maxfield Parrish.

He started out as an apprentice since he was seventeen years old and then progressed to the American Academy of Art and graduated in 1973. He then worked in Chicago as an apprentice illustrator with some very well-known artists. After leaving the studio he spent the next eighteen years freelancing for secular companies around the world. He was represented in New York and Chicago. Ron has worked for a copious amount of companies, describing them as huge, Fortune 500 type companies that had advertising agencies that hired him through his agents. Now, he paints for God.

He says the Christian public has been “overwhelmingly positive” to his work and for that he gives glory to God. He believes each of us has a talent or gift and God expects we use it and cites 1 Peter 4:10 – Each of you should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms (NIV) – as a complimentary Scripture.

Ron observes how there is no difference between the methods of painting in secular and Christian art. “Each can, and should be, excellent. I strive to show God and His word in the most excellent way I can. He deserves our best!

“I consider art more communication than decoration, so if there is a message to communicate to the world before I leave it, it would be that there is a Saviour, and He is Jesus Christ the Lord!”

By Peter Veugelaers

Published 2000, Challenge Weekly

 

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