Faith is the Fuel
An Interview with Kurt Caddy
Interview by John Michael Heard
Kurt Caddy, detail of Deep Longs for Deep, Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 60 in, 2024
Last week Creo Arts was honored to host Kurt Caddy in Wilmore for an open house and kintsugi workshop. Our editor, John Michael Heard, had the opportunity to sit down with Kurt to talk about his artistic journey and his current project with Creo, entitled “Of Shame and Glory.”
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John Michael Heard: It's been really good getting to know you this week and seeing your art at the gallery. For readers who aren't familiar with your work, could you give a brief description of the kind of art that you create?
Kurt Caddy: Yeah. It's best described as liturgical abstract expressionism. That's a mouthful, so let me break it down.
Let's start with abstract. Probably the biggest elements I work with are texture and vibrant rich colors. So abstract expressionism is just this idea that I'm trying to work with deeper concepts that are beyond being able to talk about in a realism manner. For example, if I want to talk about grace, what does a realistic painting of grace look like? Those kinds of concepts are hard to get a handle on realistically. And so I'm choosing other ways to talk about hope and grace and sacrifice and forgiveness. That's why I gravitated toward abstraction—because I am trying to talk about deeper kinds of subjects.
The liturgical descriptor is just the idea that I'm really finding great benefit in a daily rhythm of life and orienting my time through a year revolved around the gospel story of Jesus. I start with Advent. I'm tracking my life through Advent. Now we're currently in a season of Lent, preparing for Good Friday and Easter, but I'm trying to [think], how do I prepare for this rather than, like, “Oh man, next week's Easter, I better get the ham right.”
I mean, I've lived like that most of my life [but now] my whole year gravitates around the rhythm of the life of Jesus and I'm finding that to be a very rewarding part of it. I'm trying to create artwork that helps the church have what I call a visual liturgy. So we have a written liturgy, we have a prayer liturgy, we have sermons around liturgy, we have music that's built around the liturgy. We have all these things, but there's just not very much visual [artwork] oriented around the concept. So that's kind of where, when I'm doing the things I love the most, I'm tracking the spiritual concepts and creating artwork for the church and God's people. Not that I don't create work for individuals in their homes and stuff like that, but when I'm at my best and doing what I love the most, it's that.
JMH: You’ve touched on this, but I'd love for you to elaborate. How does your faith inform your work as an artist?
KC: If someone told me that I had to set aside my faith for them to exhibit my work, there would be no work to exhibit… Everything is a part of [faith] no matter what I'm making it for. Like, if it's for a restaurant in our hometown—they commission a work—it's still an act of faith for me. The whole journey is all about [faith]. And I can't not incorporate it in. The creativity flows from the faith. If someone offered, “Hey, we'd love to have your work in our gallery, but you can't do this faith thing” (and I'm not talking about titles because that's not really the point of that) but there'd be nothing then I could show because I can't create without it. The faith is the fuel.
JMH: I would love to hear about your current project with Creo. What is it? What prompted you to take it on? And how do you hope it will inspire people who view it?
KC: It's a humbling thing when someone recognizes and believes in what you want to do, and they open the door for you to do it. Creo and Winfield Bevins and the staff have made that possible.
When I first was talking to them about this grant, submitting a proposal, I was like, “What do you want me to do?” He said, “Think big. What is it that you want to do?” Well, I'd hardly ever been asked that question. Usually, we ask, “What will sell?” “What does the gallery want?” It was a little shock. What do I want? I don't really know...!
The project is seven liturgical paintings that are going to tell the story of God—his redemptive story—through this abstract process, beginning with Ash Wednesday, then Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter, the Resurrection, the Ascension, and Pentecost, and then there will be a seventh painting, which will be a central piece, and that's a Trinitarian piece. It's large. It takes up a lot of space. My goal was to create a visual liturgy, something that would not take the place of our Holy Week ceremony but actually enhance it…. It's kind of a take on the stained glass that tells the story. You walk into church, you see all these figures on the stained glass. Well, they're telling a story, and it's the same thing, just using a different medium. And I'm using abstraction as opposed to realism.
It's a challenge to pull that off to create multiple layers of symbols. But I'm super excited about it. It's a large scale project that Creo believes in, and I am just humbled and honored to be able to step into that creative space.
JMH: I would love to hear any advice you have for emerging artists about faith and art and the intersection of the two.
My firm conviction is that we try to integrate things that are already integrated. It is a little redundant, and we say it because it communicates what we're trying to say, like I'm trying to integrate, but it's already in it. God already did it. I'm trying to walk in that integration. And the best way to understand the word integration is to understand its opposite… when something is disintegrated, it's falling to pieces. So what we want to do is to help our art and our faith hold each other up. My faith isn't propping up my artwork and my artwork isn't propping up my faith…. Both of these things are vital, equally holding each other together. And so my advice is that you have to take care of both of those things. You have to be faithful to your faith, and you have to be faithful to your art.
Kurt Caddy is a follower of Jesus who paints and sculpts. He lives on a small farm in Southwest Missouri with his wife Laura. They have 8 biological and adopted children. You can find more about his work at https://www.kurtcaddy.com.
