Draw near in faith, and …

This simple A5 diary, part of the Brooklyn Art Library’s Sketchbook Project, explores the role of memory in my experience of faith and within the context of public worship. The first page of the book is a simple response to words from scripture as I heard them in public worship: ‘Draw near with faith, and …’. I stopped listening at this moment and began to wonder about my own response to what it is like to draw near with faith, and in doing so I discovered a myriad of possibilities beginning to emerge. As 2019 became 2020, the drawings in this small diary explore the shift into virtual worship and so my experience of embodied memory in the process of drawing became increasingly important. In leafing through the virtual pages in this work, I now see faith being formed and re-formed with and through the memories that have been imprinted in my experience of being in worship alongside other people. What began as a record of the past has now become a map for the future – an invitation to consider the freedom of unknowing and the gift of turning the page, to begin again once more.

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Libby Byrne lives works and plays of Wurundjeri land. She works as an artist, art therapist, and theologian following the invitation and discovery of art into new ways of being with people in liminal spaces. Within her studio practice Libby works with ideas, images, and experiences to extend the way we think, perceive, and respond to questions of meaning and existence.