Pinterest Madness!

It seems like nowadays I’m always brainstorming ways to share religious art. After all, religious art has basically transformed my faith into something more concrete and real. After all, it’s one thing to think about Jesus dying for us. For instance, consider the phrase, “Jesus died for our sins.” How many times have we heard that and have remained unaffected by those words?

But it’s another thing to be confronted with images of Christ crucified.

I experienced this while making my books, too. Praying the Rosary would stir my heart when I truly prayed it, but all too often, my mind would drift elsewhere. As soon as I made my books so that every prayer was accompanied by an artwork, my mind stopped wandering. What can I say? It’s hard to brainstorm grocery lists while praying the Sorrowful Mysteries when confronted by image after image of the Passion of Christ.

Religious artwork can be truly powerful!

The problem? It can also be hard to find.

That was my experience when finding artwork for my books, in fact. You would think that it would be easy. Just type in a couple of keywords for Google and, bam! High-quality religious art! But, that isn’t necessarily the case.

For one, you have to know the keywords… which is not necessarily a given. For instance, did you know that when you’re searching for images of the “Scourging of the Pillar”, you probably need to type in “Flagellation” since that is the title of most artworks of that mystery? And then you have to phrase it in such a way that you don’t get anything vulgar. Eep.

For another, finding the artwork when it’s the domain of a different, non-English speaking country can be… difficult. For instance, did you know that the Transfiguration is known as the Transformation in Russian? So, not every religious phrase translates very well.

The best quality images available for download tend to be on the museum website that houses the work. But, because of the way the museum indexes their artwork, it makes it difficult for people who just want to view religious art in general, if you’re not proficient in art history. Nor does Google necessarily index their images very well, so it’s very possible that you have to do detective work, just to find good quality religious art images.

And so! I’ve decided to do something about it.

Enter: Pinterest.

I’ve started up a Pinterest account! You can access it here!

I think it’s gorgeous. My featured board is the images from my blog posts… because, let’s face it, some of those images are pretty cool! And, of course, some images of my books because I’m super proud of them!

But, if you scroll down to look at the boards, you’ll find a bunch of museums. And, if you click on the image, it’ll take you to the museum webpage that displays that particular artwork. Straight to the source! And! You can download the image! And then, who knows? Perhaps you can plan a pilgrimage to some of these museums to view their sacred artworks. 🙂

So take a look!

Right now, it’s a work in progress. Mind you, there are hundreds of artwork on my Pinterest boards so far, but — trust me — I’ve only scratched the surface! There are so many brilliant religious artworks! So, don’t forget to follow! I’ll add more as I see more.

And don’t worry… I’ll still blog! 🙂