Page 10 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 15

About the Artist:

John Freeman (Australia)

by interview with Werner May

Werner: First of all I would like to ask you to
give us some insight into your life develop-
ment, your family situation and your profes-
sional ways.

John: I have been married to Janie for nearly 40
years, we have four grown up children and two
beautiful grandsons. We currently live on the
Fleurieu Peninsular in South Australia, a beau-
tiful part of the world with sea, hills and grape
vines. I trained as an Art teacher and taught art
for over a decade. The next season of my life was
focused on raising a family, and various entre-
preneurial enterprises.
I spent 30 years in the commercial environment Around the time of my retirement we had an
retiring at 60 after selling my online training incident in our Church community that caused
company to a University consortium. I have me to evaluate my life and critique my under-
been retired for over six years and have had the standing, knowledge and experience of God and
great fortune to have the time to pursue my pas- the institutional church. After a considerable
sions: family, reading and of course Art. It is in amount of questioning, reading, reflection, and
the past decade that I have returned to painting, anguish, I stepped away from an Evangelical or
first in my spare time and then after retirement, Christian fundamentalist view of the world. I
at my pleasure. came to see, for me, that my understanding and
experience of the Divine was determined and
My current work endeavours to create confined within a Christian Protestant frame-
something beautiful, playful and joyful, but also work. It was a structure of prescribed beliefs,
uses abstraction as a means to facilitate imagi- dogma, and cultural bias that determined how I
nation and self-awareness in the viewer. viewed myself and my world.

Now of course I am interested in your spiri- For my journey, what became important to me
tual development, because we stay not the was an expression of love that was open, diverse,
same person and not the same Christian in and inclusive. I embraced mystery and the con-
the years of our lives. templative path. A deep awareness of the divine
and a hunger for that presence in my life caused
Having grown up in a loving, but rather dys- me to seek in a broader more open manner of
functional family, I became a Christian around inquiry. My spiritual practice began to include
nineteen years of age. I had what is described readings from a diverse range of religious and
as a “born again” experience which radically theological perspectives, mindfulness, medita-
changed my life, my values and how I perceived tion and yoga. My life experience, education and
the world. For about 25 years up until the time openness has enabled me to come to a richer
of my retirement, my family and I were very in- understanding and experience of the Divine.
volved in a Protestant church, where I was an Silence and stillness have been one of the doors
Elder for over 20 of those years. that have opened me to this deeper awareness. I

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