5 minute read
Artistic Anointing
Award-winning artist and corps officer (church leader) at New Plymouth Corps Aux-Captain Maryanne Shearman, sat down with Kelly Cooper for a conversation about art, creativity and living a life with purpose.
Aux-Captain Maryanne Shearman humbly describes herself as a missionary. ‘I believe the purpose of my life is to be filled with God and to give back to him through everything I do,’ she explains. In 2024, that ‘everything’ for Maryanne included becoming an awardwinning artist and more recently, along with her husband Aux-Captain Gareth Shearman, an appointment to the position of corps officers and directors of Community Ministries at New Plymouth Corps.
Following a rigorous application process and months of prayer, Maryanne and Gareth were warranted as auxiliary captains on 1 September 2023. This appointment involved a move from a coastal village to central New Plymouth, with their three children. ‘We know this move is right. God has asked a lot of us and we’re doing it, so I’m excited to see what this adventure is going to be,’ shares Maryanne.
That same spirit of adventure led Maryanne to enter and win the 2024 Adam Portraiture Award for her portrait painting of prominent Māori climate activist Tuhi-Ao Bailey. ‘I’ve been drawing and painting since I was little. I never went to university and have no formal training. I am a missionary. My life is set apart for his work and my art is part of that work.’
Inspired creation
The journey to create this award-winning portrait began over two years ago with a conversation. ‘Tuhi-Ao is a private person, and it was wonderful that she agreed to me capturing a glimpse of her story,’ shares Maryanne. ‘We took photos at her papakaianga (a group of houses) and I started the piece; but then it sat, and I wondered if the fire had gone out. Months later, as I was thinking of Tuhi-Ao, I drove past her on the road where I had previously seen a baby kingfisher. Kingfisher is kōtare in te reo Māori and it means ‘watchman’. Tuhi-Ao is a watchman for her people, and I had been planning to paint a kōtare in her portrait. Things like this just happen with my art. It is the Holy Spirit. I knew I was meant to paint this piece, and I finished it right on the deadline,’ says Maryanne.
‘My faith has always been a part of me and so has my art,’ explains Maryanne. ‘If we are consecrated to him, then everything we create or do he delights in, and it becomes worship. My art really comes alive when that’s how I am operating. As soon as I click into “my art is a job”, the quality of my work declines and I find myself on tangents that aren’t full of life, but when I keep it in that place with him, it always flows. It’s pure joy!
‘There are secular artists who witness that idea of a kōrero or a creation coming to them and almost asking to be output—this sense of being a vessel—I really do believe that’s what we are made to do as people. There is no better joy than operating in our anointing,’ says Maryanne. ‘I love that passage in Exodus 31:1–5 where one of the first people to be filled the Holy Spirit is Bezalel. It’s not Moses or some other prophet who receives the Spirit, it’s an artist, who made all the items for the first tabernacle.
When you are filled with the Holy Spirit, you can’t hold it in. For me, my art is one way of doing something with the overflowing of his Spirit,’ shares Maryanne.
A new covenant
Maryanne is grateful for the support of local Taranaki galleries that exhibit her landscape and native bird paintings, which she also sells online. After receiving the exposure and prestige of the Adam Portraiture Award, an artist would typically use this opportunity as a springboard to create more work, host larger exhibitions and increase sales. Maryanne laughs, ‘I wasn’t meant to win. In a way I didn’t want to because I was going to have to say to them, “Well thanks for this award, but I am actually going to become a pastor now!” That’s not really what you do in the art world, but God was saying, “Lay it down and see what I’ll do”. In the future I would love to have one piece of art that I’m working on and for that work to be exhibited, but we’ll see. I am trusting God. I know that my mission is going to look different moving to officership,’ says Maryanne.
‘It feels like a massive privilege to step into leading one of the churches in our city. Our role is to collaborate with God and allow him to reveal his plans to us. Although I’m aligning my career and my life with the covenant of being an officer, that doesn’t take away my identity as an artist,’ reflects Maryanne. ‘I am excited to see how God will feed that part of who I am. The Salvation Army is a creative movement that was built by ridiculously creative people, so I want to remind us that creative people—artists, dreamers, and prophets—can operate in this system in their fullness. That is my prayer, my hope and dream for New Plymouth, this place that we love.’
