Creativity and the Image of God

When God first reveals Himself in Scripture, He does not reveal Himself as a king on a throne or a judge with a gavel. He reveals Himself as a Creator. The very first words of the Bible — "In the beginning, God created" — tell us something profound about who God is and, by extension, who we are.

If God is the Creator, and we are made in His image, then creativity is not a talent given to a fortunate few. It is woven into what it means to be human. Every person — the carpenter, the mother who arranges her table, the child who builds with blocks, the farmer who tends his land — is expressing something of the image of God. We create because we were made by a Creator.

He Called It Good

What strikes me most about the creation account in Genesis is not just that God created, but how He responded to what He made. After each act of creation, God looked at His work and called it good. And at the end of it all, He looked at everything He had made and called it very good.

I have experienced this many times across the years. You stand back from the canvas — the light has fallen just right across the hills, the figures carry the warmth you were reaching for, the colors have found their harmony — and something in you quietly says: that is good. I believe that moment is holy. It is the image of God in us recognising something of His glory reflected back through our hands.

The power to create is not ours by nature. It is a gift. We do not generate beauty from nothing the way God does. We receive the materials — light, color, form, line — and we arrange them. We are sub-creators, as the theologian C.S. Lewis once wrote, reflecting the creativity of the One who made us.

Not for Pleasure Alone — For Glory

There is nothing wrong with painting for the joy of it. God delights in His creation, and we are permitted to delight in ours. But I want to challenge every artist, whether you paint landscapes or draw buildings or sketch figures, to reach for something higher than pleasure alone.

Paint for the glory of God.

This does not mean every painting must carry a scripture verse or a Christian symbol. It means that the discipline you bring to your craft, the honesty with which you observe the world, the beauty you pursue on the canvas — all of it can be offered to God as an act of worship. The Jamaican hills I grew up beneath, the red dirt roads, the women carrying baskets on their heads, the Caribbean light falling warm and golden across the afternoon — when I paint these things with care and truthfulness, I am saying: God made this, and it is beautiful, and I will not let it pass without witness.

This is why I teach art the way I do — not merely as a set of techniques to be mastered, but as a discipline rooted in seeing. To be a good artist, you must learn to truly see the world. And to truly see the world is to begin to see the hand of the One who made it.

You Are More Creative Than You Think

Perhaps you have told yourself you are not creative. Perhaps someone told you that when you were young, and it settled into you like a false belief. I want you to reconsider that. You were made in the image of a God who spoke galaxies into existence, who painted the sunset every evening without repeating Himself once. That creativity is in you. It may be buried under fear or years of not trying, but it is there.

When you pick up a pencil and draw your first line, you are not pretending to be something you are not. You are stepping into something you already are — a creative being made in the image of a creative God.

Come and learn to paint. Not just for the pleasure of it, though there is much pleasure. But for the glory of the One who gave you eyes to see and hands to create.