Mary Leonard poses for a photo surrounded by some of her paintings on Tuesday at Foote Lagoon in downtown Loveland. Leonard will be leading Painting Mariahsachin Worship on Tuesday at Resurrection Fellowship church using abstract painting to help viewers worship God through art.

 

 

By SHELLEY WIDHALM Loveland Reporter-Herald

August 30, 2016 at 9:46 pm

 

If you go

What: Painting Mariahsachin Worship during Tuesday Encounters.

When: 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 6; Tuesday Encounters is the first Tuesday of the month.

Where: Resurrection Fellowship, 6502 E. Crossroads Blvd., Loveland.

Book Signing: 3-7 p.m. Monday, Sept. 5, at the Coffee Tree, 210 E. Fourth St, Loveland..

More info: Visit www.Mariahsachin.com, email Princess@Mariahsachin.com or call the church at 667-5479.

An artist bringing out the easel and painting an abstract image while music plays isn’t all that unusual.

But at the front of church during worship service?

Artist and author Mary Leonard is often asked why she’s producing abstract paintings at Resurrection Fellowship in Loveland.

“It’s easier for them to connect with themselves and God if I make it abstract,” Leonard said, explaining that realistic painting can give the viewers something to idolize. “We want to blow it out so it’s spirit thinking, not realistic painting.”

Leonard will be leading a Painting Mariahsachin Worship during Tuesday Encounters on Sept. 6 at Resurrection Fellowship, 6502 E. Crossroads Blvd.. It’s a more-charismatic service than the regular Sunday services that includes music, art and a lecture. She’s produced three or four praise and worship paintings at Resurrection each year, but now that she’s returning to Loveland, she’ll be creating them more regularly.

“The painting is another voice. Like the hands for the deaf, this is music to the spirit,” Leonard said.

Leonard, who currently uses oil and acrylic for her worship paintings, hopes a color, shape or aspect of the paintings will stir people to open their hearts to God to speak to them.

“There’s just this overwhelming flow of energy that hits you. It’s such a feeling of love that comes,” Leonard said.

Mariahsachin is a concept Leonard co-developed with her late aunt, Betty Richardson, when she was 12 years old. It means “essence of the essence,” she said.

Using the Mariahsachin technique, Leonard paints in the spirit by inviting the Holy Spirit into the act of painting as a form of worship, turning the painting into a living prayer. It’s painting for and to God, she said.

“I want to tap into the flow of what the spirit is doing in this moment,” Leonard said.

Leonard assembled 28 of her paintings for her children’s picture book, “God’s Little Princess, A Child’s Abstract Journey,” published in 2015 by Whitehall Publishing. Young readers are encouraged to trace and cut out a star to place over one painting a day as they follow the main character, a little princess, on a vision quest as she does good on earth while watching out for the Prince of Earth. She has a treasure box of gifts, talents and a mission she can open when she’s ready to use them.

“The book helps parents use this as a vision quest, so the child can find a relationship with God,” Leonard said, adding that she wants to foster children’s imaginations and generate conversations about their spiritual walks.

Leonard plans to publish a companion guide for parents in 2017.

The paintings from the first book came from work Leonard did in 2013 to 2015 at worship sessions at churches in Colorado, Ohio and Washington, most of them at Resurrection.

Leonard, who does worship painting along the Front Range, also provides workshops, retreats and seminars to teach the practice of Mariahsachin. Mariahsachin Painting with the Spirit is a self-help practice that uses the abstract that helps the painter or observer move into a place of their spirit and feelings, making room for the spirit to flow.

She shows her work in galleries in Colorado, Ohio and Washington and twice showed her work at the Nagasaki Peace Museum in Japan. She sold her first painting at age 12 to a hospital in Ohio and had her first one-woman show at age 13.

She plans to open an art studio in Loveland in January and to have a smaller studio at Resurrection. She’ll offer classes, workshops and retreats and have her art and the work of other artists on display. She moved from Coupeville, Wash., to Loveland, and has lived in Colorado off and on since 1975.

“We love it here. Our kids are here. Our church is here,” Leonard said.