Sharing the Process of Creating the Earth to Eden Abstract Landscape Collection

With many of my collections, I start first with writing and reading. Earth to Eden is no different. Thoughts from Makoto Fujimura’s book Art + Faith kept percolating to the surface: 

“Through the fissures of our broken journeys, with pieces of our own hearts shattered on the ground, we journey by God’s grace into the New Creation. God sees beyond our shattered remains. He picks them up and sings a song over us.” 

In the Midst, 48 x 24 inches

The Earth to Eden collection shows the moments of reconciliation of a world back to its Creator. Colors swirl and paint drips, caught where the viewer is invited into the very moment where the reconciliation is occurring. This is when darkness fades and new light is revealed. Some paintings show the fading darkness - the turmoil of transformation such as battling waves and stormy skies, while others result in a colorful landscape fully unfurling God’s glory. Large skies show the swirling of the spiritual and the physical - the reckoning of creation back from the grips of the curse. 

One of my favorite paintings of the collection is In The Midst, a marsh scene full of stormy sky. It was inspired by Jesus calming the storm. Surely the disciples were terrified, but in that very moment, there was His peace with the storm.

The two were together for a brief moment, inviting the disciples to step into faith and believe this Messiah would take care of them. In the painting, the land has light and darks; the sky wrestles with faith and doubt. I tend to feel like this daily in some aspects, to doubt and to believe, to pray expectantly, and to pray out of routine. This painting, to me, speaks to what it is to be human. 

The human aspect in the act of painting was important to me as well. I wanted to make sure the brush strokes were not feathered and smoothed out so the viewer could see the human hand that created them. I also wanted to make sure to keep the dripping paint layers as part of the final paintings. Normally, you might think to cover those layers up, but to me, they express the movement of the kingdom. The drips physically moved down the canvas and pooled into lines on their own, forming layers of the painting. The drips also represent a sense of freedom for me and shatter my old ways of perfectionism. 

The themes of God’s kingdom breaking into our broken world are a constant in this collection. The main question is: What does it look like to have hope in times of suffering and despair? In other words, to know pain and suffering, but to also know the hope on the other side? 

The collection poses the question: After all the world’s suffering, what would it look like to be transformed into the hope of Eden?

To me, it is tangible and intangible. It is ephemeral and it is steadfast. It feels like knowing and unknowing. This kind of hope is not understood by many. It is faith in things unseen, a knowing that a good God interacts with His creation in deep and suffering ways to understand us and the wounds of humankind. 

When you first look at this bright colorful collection, it might seem like a strange juxtaposition to discuss suffering, but we must first start with suffering to understand hope. God continues to move in His world. Suffering is here, but it isn’t the end of the story. It is the beginning of growth, love and breakthrough. This collection, Earth to Eden, visualizes that moment of breakthrough of light in the darkness. 

close-up detail of New Light, 18 x 24 inches

Light was a major theme in each of the paintings, particularly the ones with large skies. Most have multiple areas of light. One of the first rules as a painter is to find your light source, but with these abstractions of landscape and the physical reality and its laws, I wanted to play with light coming in from multiple angles - the Light of the World refracting and reflecting into multiple layers for the reconciliation process. 

Bringing in the New, 36 x 36 inches

2 Corinthians 5:16 - 18a says, “This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new creation. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.”

As an artist and a Christ-follower, I long to be a part of the reconciliation in these times more than ever. The kingdom is now. It is coming and it has already come. Viewing it through the lens of final but not yet finished, helps bring life and hope to a weary world. Earth to Eden is a collection of that tangible yet intangible presence of God and his Kingdom and the effects of His glory on creation. It visualizes the longing in my own life to bring in the Kingdom, one sliver of light at a time, to bring beauty and goodness into a world that desperately needs it, and to throw off the old things resulting from brokenness. 

All of the paintings are what I call, spiritual landscapes. They combine the physical elements of water, land, and sky with spiritual realities like creativity, hope, and joy.  Earth to Eden invites the viewer to take in a moment of transformation where the kingdom breaks through. 

With each collection, I take a moment to write a poem that encapsulates what I am feeling and thinking about as I paint it. Sometimes that is difficult ( I just wrote over 1,000 words about it!) But the distillation of poetry is what I love - big concepts and ideas into a small amount of words, similar to my painting process. Here is the companion poem with the Earth to Eden collection: 

The Spirit Who Moves Us

Like a vapor, it permeates the whole source,

bits and pieces of knowing.

Interstellar, one place and time folded 

on top of one another.

It mirrors and refracts the past and future.

Deep expanse and then a beam of light

pulls through the darkness

pulls through the universe

pulls through us.

We seek truth and beauty and mercy.

Hold it in your hands like slipping water -

You will find Him here.

We leave pieces of ourselves along the journey,

Things we no longer need

Things we no longer want to carry

Things that are no longer us

The pieces that remain are molded and shaped

given to others to become

something larger than ourselves,

bright shining gold

left to be poured and pulled into a new creation.

What's Your Process?

When artists speak to artists, a familiar question is “What’s your process?”

As a writer and an artist, I love discussing all things process. The honing of craft as a creative fascinates me. How does an artist reach the fruition of a painting? What are they inspired by and how does it translate in their work? How does a spark of an idea become a finished piece?

So here’s a little behind-the-scenes peek of my process when I paint a large piece:

Start with Inspiration

I absolutely without a doubt have to start with inspiration. This may seem obvious, but as an abstract painter, it’s easy to be swayed into creating a composition without tangible inspiration. Beware! Learn from my mistakes. I’ve always had a more successful painting when I had a certain idea or inspiration in mind.

Some examples of inspiration for me are:

• specific color palettes (especially when working on commissions for clients)

• outer space and galaxies

• natural materials such as rock formations, stones and slices of agate

• specific assignments/prompts (I just completed one on trees.)

Now, it doesn’t mean my pieces have to look exactly like my inspiration. (It never does.)

Use a simple sketch as an outline

When doing a large painting, (I usually paint 4x3 ft. or 5x 4 ft.) it is helpful to get the major shapes and colors on paper before I start painting. I usually just dash pastels in my sketchbook to give myself a loose outline. Here are a few of my sketches for my paintings:

They are super rough, but they basically serve as a tangible representation of the inspiration and give me the general idea of where I am going. Once I can get the images out of my head and on paper, I know that I have an idea I can paint.

Make a wash + line painting



This has been a relatively new step for me that has made all of the difference. I use a big brush with lots of water and sweep the color across the canvas. Again, this is a guide when I start to pour and use fluid painting techniques. For example, in this painting I knew I wanted the colors to be sunset colors and flow from orange to purple. The base painting gave me a guide to where the orange should stop and the purple should start.

Create the final painting

It sounds so simple, right? Now, just paint your masterpiece. This obviously might be the hardest step, but when it follows the other steps, I am much more at peace. My mind focuses on the colors and composition of the pieces and stays away from the lurking dark corners of self-doubt that tend to visit when I paint without a plan. Here’s the final painting from the first two steps I showed earlier:

But, this is the step where it can change the most. I once had a painting where I was painting it horizontally, and it just wasn’t working. I flipped it vertically and it was much more successful. Sometimes abstract painters can get away with this, but I usually try to avoid any major changes.

But I am learning to I follow my intuition instead of the plan for the plan’s sake. Fluid painting has taught me so much about intuition and control. It has helped this control freak relax and allow for great, unplanned things to happen.

So that is a little insight into my process. What is your process? Do you start with inspiration photos and sketches? Do you do a base coat when you paint? I would love to know more. Comment below.

Check out my social media to see more photos and videos of my paintings in process at @brookeharrispaints.