{"id":24223,"date":"2021-03-09T14:46:01","date_gmt":"2021-03-09T21:46:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/speeches.byu.edu\/?post_type=speech&p=24223"},"modified":"2022-09-08T09:23:25","modified_gmt":"2022-09-08T15:23:25","slug":"transformative-power-faith-art","status":"publish","type":"speech","link":"https:\/\/speeches.byu.edu\/talks\/janalee-emmer\/transformative-power-faith-art\/","title":{"rendered":"The Transformative Power of Faith and Art"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
It is an incredible honor to be here today. Thank you to those of you who are here in person and who are listening online. BYU devotionals and forums are a unique and wonderful part of our campus traditions, and I am humbled and grateful to be a part of them. In my career as an art historian and museum professional, I have had the great privilege of learning from art and artists of the past and present. Today I would like to share some of the insights, both secular and spiritual, that I have learned through my field of study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I would like to begin with a quote from French artist Rosa Bonheur, perhaps the most successful female painter of the nineteenth century. Near the end of her career, Bonheur declared: \u201cMy whole life has been devoted to improving my work and keeping alive the Creator\u2019s spark in my soul. Each of us has a spark, and we\u2019ve all got to account for what we do.\u201d1<\/sup> Bonheur\u2019s spark led her to paint, despite enormous obstacles and cultural restrictions, and to paint what she loved, which was animals. Her impressive painting The Horse Fair,<\/em> exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1853, is part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art collection. Through it, her bold determination to be true to herself and to that spark inside her opened the doors of possibility for later generations of women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n