The Thriving Christian Artist

Send us Fan Mail My friend Ying McLane grew up in China loving art, painting, and writing, but she never thought it could be a career for her, much less one that she could thrive while doing (sound familiar?). But when she came to the United States, she met her future husband, she met Jesus, and she saw the beautiful possibilities that God had in store for her and her art. Now she is a thriving Ch...

Send us Fan Mail I use the word "thrive" so much that I sometimes forget to take a step back and clarify what I mean by it.  Thriving is all about flourishing in what God has called you to and experiencing the abundance, joy, and fulfillment God created us for.    So how does one go about thriving in the Kingdom of God?    In this episode of 5-Minute Mentoring, I tell you about God'...

Send us Fan Mail My guest on this episode of the Thriving Christian Artist podcast is Jeff Brewer, a product launch expert to other online experts.  Jeff helps people launch and scale their businesses online. So what does he have to do with art, you may ask?  Well, think about this.  When you create a piece for your art business, you want it to sell, right?  You want to get it in front of the righ...

Send us Fan Mail If we’re called by God to be creative, doesn’t that mean we should never have trouble creating?  There are times when the art is flowing out of us, the paint is leaping oto the canvas, the clay is taking shape at our slightest whims, and we can feel the Holy Spirit co-creating with us. But sometimes it doesn’t feel like that.  Sometimes we enter the studio and all we can do is sta...

Send us Fan Mail Have you ever stopped to think about how much of an impact an act of stepping out in faith can have on people?  I don’t just mean for that person, either.  God can use acts of faith to affect and bolster the lives of countless people in a cascade of blessings from that one initial act.    But it has to start with an act of faith.  Of obedience to God’s will.  Of taking courage in...

Send us Fan Mail As of the time of this video, the Powerball lottery is up to something like $1.9 BILLION dollars.  Billion.  With a B.  Can you even fathom how much money that is?  It is such a staggering amount of money for a person to have for themselves that it might as well be called a “gazillion” or a “bajillion.”  It’s no wonder so many people are buying a ticket or two in the infinitesimal...

Send us Fan Mail When you look at the world around you, it’s hard not to be discouraged by the seemingly endless contention between people.  Politics have never been more divisive.  The comments on practically any social media posts so often devolve into bickering, bullying, and worse.  Even some hateful ideologies that seemed to have been stamped out decades ago are rearing their ugly heads again...

Send us Fan Mail Stop doing things for God. “Matt, why would you say that?  Aren’t we supposed to spend our lives doing things for God? Aren't we supposed to spend our whole lives doing things for God?  Shouldn't we be doing all we can to advance the Kingdom and try to repay God for saving us?  Why would you tell us to stop, Matt?” Don’t worry - I can explain!  On this episode of 5-Minut...

Send us Fan Mail Never underestimate God's ability to find a place for you in advancing His Kingdom.  When my friend Veronica Anzorena heard God calling her to missions, she wasn’t sure if her artistic skills and talents could be put to use.  She thought being a painter, print-maker, graphic designer, and so on, might not be as useful to a community in need as, say, a doctor, a teacher, or pe...

Send us Fan Mail Today we celebrate 400 episodes of the Thriving Christian Artist podcast.  Can you believe it?  That’s almost as many episodes as Bob Ross made of “The Joy Of Painting” (403, according to Wikipedia)! When we first started this podcast back in 2018, I couldn’t possibly have foreseen the number of episodes we would go on to produce, all the amazing people we’ve met, or the doors tha...

Send us Fan Mail You know, being a Christian doesn’t mean every day is sunshine and lollipops.  We have the same struggles in our lives as anyone else, and they can lead to heartbreak, anxiety, addiction, and all of the other negative outcomes you can think of.   What separates the Christian from everybody else, however, is our faith and belief that we have a loving God looking out for us who can...

Send us Fan Mail There are a lot of things out there that we might find ourselves seeking in this world.  Fame, fortune, comfort, power, pleasure, and so much more are idolized, obsessed over, and available to us right now, more than at any other time in history.   But just like Yoda told Luke that a Jedi doesn’t crave adventure and excitement, we Christians have been told not to crave those types...

Send us Fan Mail When you look at all the difficulties facing the world today - like poverty, hunger, war, depression, and so on - it can be easy to think your calling to art doesn’t matter that much to the world.  But don’t despair!  Your calling to be an artist is a calling from God, and that’s never a small or insignificant thing.  As my guest on this episode of the Thriving Christian Artist po...

Send us Fan Mail It can be easy to think that your role as an artist in this world is somehow unimportant when weighed against what else is going on.   After all, it's easy to downplay the role of the arts in light of the heavier issues of life like injustice, poverty, famine and war.   But as we see in the Bible, God has a way of using the most unexpected people and things to His purposes gr...

Send us Fan Mail Stanton Lanier grew up playing the piano and writing songs, but he never seriously considered it as something he could make his living doing.   Instead, he went the more practical route, attending Georgia Tech and getting business degrees that led him to years of work in the financial industry.   But his desire to make music never left him, and he never left it behind.  Even worki...

Send us Fan Mail Everybody has ups and downs in their lives and in their businesses.  So how are some people seemingly more successful at navigating the downs than others?  How do these people keep their eyes on the prize?    Even when you’re at your highest peak creatively, you’re selling your art, you’re making your voice heard, it can be easy to get distracted.  Emergencies.  The holidays.  Car...

Send us Fan Mail I believe God always puts people together for a reason.  That sure seems to be the case with Janalyn Arnold and Henny Koonstra, my guests on this episode of the Thriving Christian Artist podcast.   After different paths lead these two young artists to the same school, Jana and Henny are on the cusp of graduating from the art program at Redeemer University in Hamilton, Ontario, Can...

Send us Fan Mail Jesus told us that when we feel heavy-laden, we should just come to Him, give Him everything that’s weighing us down, and take up His light and easy yoke.   “Just come to Me.”   Come as you are.  No judgment. Don’t try to fix yourself up before you see Him.  Just come on.   That can be a hard thing to remember at times when we’re really feeling the burden of our human struggles. ...

Send us Fan Mail What's the strangest place you've found inspiration for your art?   For Bert Ballou, my guest on this episode of the Thriving Christian Artist podcast, inspiration came from a wise-cracking donkey on an adventure with a grumpy, green ogre.   On a rewatch of the animated children’s classic, Shrek , Bert was rather surprised to hear God telling him to write a children&apos...

Send us Fan Mail Economy got you down? Nervous about the prospects for your art business at this particular time?   Afraid you won’t be able to sell your art for what it’s actually worth because potential buyers may be tightening their belts to get through this downturn?   I hear ya.   Being a full-time artist can feel pretty uncertain even at the best of economic times, especially when you’re jus...

Send us Fan Mail Sometimes it’s not the destination but the journey that matters.  To say my guest on this episode of the Thriving Christian Artist podcast has had a winding road leading to his life as a full-time artist would be an understatement.   Tist One - a name he took on in a graffiti-centric part of his journey - spent his elementary school days in South Korea before moving to the United...

Send us Fan Mail Ever feel like there's just not enough time in the day to do the things you want to do?  Is that feeling keeping you from pursuing your artistic dreams?   Feeling like there's not enough time is a common concern for everybody.  We’re all given the same 24 hours every day to accomplish what we want and need to do, but sometimes you feel like you could accomplish so much m...

Send us Fan Mail If you're like basically everybody in the world today, you spend a good deal of each day interacting with people through social media.  And if you're an artist trying to build a brand and a business, you are surely putting a huge portion of your time and energy towards building up your social media presence.    So if all that work and all those connections just got snatc...

Send us Fan Mail This could be goodbye, - But don’t worry, it’s probably me, not you… There comes a time in every relationship where you have to ask the uncomfortable questions. And in our relationship, I often wonder “Am I really doing everything I can to help them thrive as an artist?”  I know you might say “Oh sure Matt, you’re doing great” but I want to know what’s really going on in your hear...

Send us Fan Mail Have you ever felt like just when you're approaching mastery of one of your artistic pursuits, you become enamored of something else?   We creatives have a natural tendency to want to try everything.  And that's great!  All sorts of art can be fulfilling and fun.   But if you're trying to run a successful art business and you start dabbling in media or styles or eve...