The Artistic Vision: Cultivating a Sacramental Imagination for Creative Practice

When you look at the world, what do you see? As an artist, your creativity stems from your vision. The problem in the modern world is how often one’s imagination is fragmented and reduced--between worship and work, the body and soul, the material and the spiritual. Written to practicing artists and those who pastor them, The Artistic Vision encourages artists who long for a greater sense of purpose and a greater sense of wholeness, proposing that seeing the material world as a shadow of spiritual realities will lead them toward an expression that joins faith and practice. Drawing from the Oxford Movement and artistic examples like Christina Rosetti and Flannery O’Connor, Ball and Sosler present a sacramental way of seeing the world: the invisible through the visible, the spiritual through the material, the divine through creation. Interspersed with practical vignettes from artists and pastoral reflection, The Artistic Vision helps artists regain an enchanted, mysterious, and reverent vision of life. Artists neither have to check their faith at the studio door, nor produce kitschy or easy art. By creating with a sacramental vision, they are seeing the world ＂charged with the grandeur of God＂ and inviting viewers into that participation.

Alex Sosler is assistant professor of Bible and ministry at Montreat College and assisting priest at Redeemer Anglican Church in Asheville, North Carolina. He is author of Learning to Love: Christian Education as Pilgrimage and A Short Guide to Spiritual Formation: Finding Life in Truth, Goodness, Beauty, and Community and editor of Theology and the Avett Brothers.



​​Gary Ball is the lead priest at Redeemer Anglican Church in Asheville, North Carolina. He is a practicing artist, primarily using watercolor and ink. Ball is married to Susannah and is the father of Flora, Elias, Karis, and Francis.