Hi, I’m Faith!
I’m an artist based in Lititz, PA. I’ve been creating artwork for as long as I can remember, but it’s only been in recent years that I found my true inspiration. In 2021, I had an encounter with Jesus that transformed my life, and now I create with and for Him.
I graduated from Carlin Academy of Fine Art in 2021, where I was trained in drawing and oil painting. I work part time at Gateway House of Prayer as their Creative Arts Coordinator, incorporating visual and performing arts into our prayer and worship.
My Story
“This is meaningless…” I thought numbly, staring into the muddy paint water as I swirled my brush around the cup. I had just quit my full-time job to pursue a career in fine art. I loved the craft itself, and the attention it had gotten me all throughout my life. Not many kids my age had the skill I did, and I threw myself into the art business starting in middle school, drawing and painting religiously every day, and taking every commission I could get. During high school, I studied at the amazing Carlin Academy of Fine Art, where I was trained in classical realism with graphite drawing and oil painting, and I graduated after 3 years.
And yet, as much as I loved it all, I was slipping into depression. Most nights, I cried myself to sleep. Most days, I was devoid of joy. I remember various times wishing that I wasn’t alive anymore. I enjoyed creating, but perfectionism, performance, and comparison were always at my throat, judging me, and slowly sucking the life out of my creative process. The more skilled I became, and the more hours I spent in my isolated home studio, the more I felt that my art– what’s more, my life– was completely meaningless.
If God is real, there must be something I’m missing,” I thought to myself. So, I set art aside, and decided to go headlong into pursuing this mysterious divine being. That’s when I found a place called Gateway House of Prayer, and decided to take their Embark Internship. For the first few weeks of the internship, I struggled immensely with seemingly being unable to hear God’s voice or experience anything supernatural. Then one evening, in a quiet little corner of the prayer room, laying on the floor, I met Jesus Himself. It’s hard to explain, because I didn’t see Him or feel Him touch my skin. But, it was as if He reached into my heart, sorted through my core, found the deepest, darkest, most pain-filled loneliness in me, and melted it with a warm hug. Since then, I have been completely transformed.
During my time at Gateway House of Prayer, I met a woman named Priscilla Williams. She is a wonderfully wild, and deeply grounded purple-haired artist in her 70’s, who eventually became my mentor. “Art is the language of the heart… HE-ART… His heart,” she carefully explained, as I stared at her blankly, not understanding a word of what she was saying. It took months of searching God’s heart to realize that He (the all-powerful Creator of the universe!) wanted to communicate with me… through visual art, of all things.
So, drawing and painting became my prayer language and my song of worship. It also became a means through which God began to speak unfathomable things to me. As He and I further developed this dialogue of imagery together, my true identity became unlocked. As He spoke to me, challenged me, and poured His love on me, I strangely found myself crying tears of joy nearly every day instead of soaking my pillow with sadness. I came to find that nothing in all of existence is better than Him.
I can now say that I have a specific calling over my life: to express the beauty of God’s heart on earth as in heaven through fine art. In 2022, I joined the staff team at Gateway House of Prayer as their Creative Arts Coordinator, and I’ve had the joy of seeing countless people (both artists and self-declared non artists) be unexplainably refreshed and set free through creative encounters with the Holy Spirit. It is my mission to display the beauty of the love I have found, and to depict the visions and dreams He gives me.
Praise God!
