Psalm 7—Artwork
Learn more about Christ in the Psalms weekly artwork and see previous pieces here.
Person: Denise Yennie
My husband and I moved to Denver by God’s calling on our lives 2 1/2 years ago where he placed us in the neighborhood of Park Church. We are blessed that our two adult kids are also in the area. One of my hobbies is photography: mostly capturing our travel adventures, God’s natural beauty, and food.
Piece
I selected Psalm 7 based on the first verse: “O Lord my God, in you I take refuge; save me from all my pursuers and deliver me.” The center photo of the volcanic rock cradling a small piece of coral immediately came to mind as a representation of God’s protection and refuge for us. This rock was about 5 ft up on a 12 ft tall volcanic rock wall that encompassed a small village. The only way that little piece of coral got there from the ocean, to be cradled and protected, was from a ferocious storm. The same place in our lives where we seek shelter, represented by the photo of the crashing waves on the rocks.
The top left photo of clouds represents a powerful God on high who rises to anger and judges the evil (vs 6, 8, & 11). With the people below worshiping him (vs 7 & 17). The photo of St. Michael, the archangel, is drawing his sword to put an end to the evil and wicked (vs 12-16) that is also represented in the crashing waves.
PROCESS: PHOTOGRAPHY
At first I was just going to stop at verse 1, using only the center photo—God is my refuge, as He has been so in my life countless times. I had so many great nature photos of places that have brought me peace and reminders of God’s goodness and glory: lots of sunrises and sunsets on mountains and beaches that I chose to use multiple photos. This then required me to do some math, playing with layouts of various size photos to best fit the 18×18 board we were given to use (which is not a standard photo size). I could use several 4x6s, though they created visual chaos, not peace and refuge. I settled on 4 8x10s (a vertical and horizontal = 18″), connected with a smaller center one. This arrangement created a nice visual flow.
But there was so much more going on in this psalm: evil and what it takes to conquer it. I don’t have a lot photos of evil, though found one photo of fire with a dark background I wanted to use to represent God’s burning anger over evil. This would give me a couple dark backgrounds with the colorful sunrise/sunset ones. But it just didn’t work, still too much noise and not a great story flow. I prayed as I went back through the Psalm and my photos to find something that might work and found the statue of St. Michael drawing a sword. Then found the angels singing to the heavens photo. Both had blue backgrounds (one day, one night) that matched the nature photos. These added a humanistic aspect, contrast, and balance to the nature photos.
