Fundamentalist America's Artist of Choice

Step aside, Kinkade! There's a new Thomas in town and the light he's promoting isn't dabbed on by interns. "Soldiers of Christ: Inside America's most powerful megachurch," a must-read piece by Jeff Sharlet in the May 2005 Harper's, is illustrated with the works of Thomas Blackshear II, whom the story describes as "a major figure in the evangelical-art world." Blackshear's work is on display inside the 11,000-member Colorado Springs megachurch on which the story focuses.

Sharlet writes:
My favorite is The Vessel ... a tall, vertical panel of two nude, aple-breasted white female angels team-pouring an urn of honey onto the shaved head of a naked, olive-skinned man below. The honey drips down over his slab-like pecs and his six-pack abs into the eponymous vessel, which he holds in fron to fhis crotch. But the vessel can't handle that much honey, so the sweetness oozes over the edges and sipills down yet another level, presumably onto our heads drenching us in golden, godly love. Part of what makes Blackshear's work so compelling is precisely its unabashed eroticism; it aims to turn you on, and then turn that passion toward Jesus.

Fascinated by Blackshear's odd blending of sophisticated propogandistic visual vocabulary with chintzy truck-stop iconography, to say nothing of the uncomfortable mixing of blatant eroticism and evangelical messaging, I looked the artist up and found this Web site which is maintained by an avid collector and says Blackshear makes "Timeless art with an eternal purpose, created to reclaim the arts for Christ." There's also this short biography. In addition to his paintings, Blackshear makes a line of collectible figurines called Ebony Visions. Read: Precious Moments with smaller eyes, dark skin, and African-American themes and garb.

The figurines are easy to dismiss as overpriced trinkets marketed to a niche consumer group. Less so the paintings. In the context of the article, which outlines the growing movement of militaristic fundamentalist Christianity--Sharlet quotes well-known born-again leaders mocking soup kitchens and metaphorically referring to pierced, sex-loving city dwellers as "critters" from the "underworld" (band name anyone?)--and documents its astonishingly close ties to the Bush Administration, the propogandistic note struck by these images launched not visions of salvation and redemption but fascism, totalitarianism, hell on earth.