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God’s Purpose for the Artist
“God’s purpose for the artist is to inspire, to give us visions of ourselves that we might not otherwise see, to make us better than we would have been. The world is better for the arts and righteous artists in it.” —Elder M. Russell Ballard1
When he was young, Brigham Anderson found it difficult to read. Slightly dyslexic, it would take time for him to make sense of sentences, but he was intrigued by the shapes of letters. “Writing, text, fonts . . . always fascinated me,” he explains. “When you put them together . . . [letters] create words, and those words create stories.”
A descendant of Ngāti Hauiti in the lower north island of Aotearoa (New Zealand), Brigham grew up with stories. He remembers listening to them on Sunday morning radio and especially enjoyed Old Testament accounts and parables from the New Testament. “Stories are really important to me,” he says.
Today, he combines his fascination for letters and symbols with his Māori heritage and love for stories to create art that powerfully expresses his testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
At the end of 2021, Brigham debuted his first exhibition, “Ngā tukutuku o te kāinga,” or “The Home of Tukutuku.” The paintings in this collection are influenced by the angular precision found in tukutuku, woven flax panels that line the inside walls of traditional Māori meeting houses. The collection also explores values outlined in “The Family: A Proclamation to the World.”
Each painting is richly layered with meaning.
Near the bottom of one panel, the word, “pūpūharakeke” is lettered in grey on a solid black background. It’s Māori for the timid flax snail, which quickly disappears into its shell when intruders approach. Above this word, a long white line extends vertically, but it’s a broken line that resembles the sometimes-broken silver trail that a snail leaves behind.
This imagery depicts moments when we might feel lost or defeated and are just trying to find our way through darkness. But the broken line is flanked by solid lines—one represents the people in our lives who bolster and support us through trials, and the other is our Saviour, Jesus Christ.
The three lines reach up, together, towards the words, “Ngakau Aroha”, which refers to empathy, benevolence, and compassion. “Compassion is needed in families,” Brigham explains. “Without compassion, families would be broken.”
Compassion is one of nine values he extracted from “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” to convey in his work. The others include faith, prayer, respect, work, and love—values, Brigham says, that are also important to Māori.
He continues to draw on his faith and culture as he works on a new collection. Based on the Abrahamic covenant, this collection of paintings also explores parallels between gospel doctrine and Māori narratives and values, and they still share messages—visual lessons—about aligning our lives with Heavenly Father’s plan for us.
Brigham is a husband and father who has held various leadership callings in the Church. Now serving as the seminary teacher for Palmerston North Stake’s Whanganui Ward, it’s in his nature to provide guidance and learning, and as his artworks become better known to the public, he’s mindful of their potential to share the gospel of Jesus Christ.
He’s witnessed strong emotional reactions to the messages in his paintings. The way Brigham sees it, “When [people] have those responses—feelings of peace . . . love . . . the veil is becoming thinner because they are recognising truths they were taught before they came to earth.” When they eventually receive the opportunity to learn gospel truths and join the Church, Brigham hopes that the experience they had with his art will help give them the courage to make the right choice and come unto Christ.
While he is aware of his human imperfections, Brigham is deeply grateful for the many gifts Heavenly Father has blessed him with. They include the ability to see and hear patterns in the world, and the desire to find meaning—stories—in these patterns.
His artwork is an effort to use his time and talents in the building of God’s kingdom. “We’ve made covenants to do this,” Brigham says, referring to the commitments that temple patrons make. “[My art] is how I am expressing my testimony.” Inevitably, it is also a reflection of his family and cultural background, what he thinks and feels, what he reads and studies, how he chooses to live.
“It’s who I am,” he says.