Art I Return To
Some art stays with me long after I leave the room.
I’ve visited the Museum of Biblical Art in Dallas several times, and each visit became connected to someone I love. I went with Josh, later with Ben, and eventually with my dad. Looking back, these photographs hold more than artwork for me. They hold memory, faith, family, and moments when something made me stop and look longer.
These are photographs I took of art that stayed with me.
Jorge Cocco Santángelo
I found Cocco before I knew the word sacrocubism. I only knew that his paintings felt different.Biblical scenes I had known all my life became shapes, angles, shadows and quiet spaces. There is something about the restraint in his work that makes me look harder. He doesn’t explain everything. He leaves room for mystery.
Miracle at the Pool of Bethesda and
Nicodemus by Night
Jorge Cocco Santángelo
Photographed by Tonya Bruton at the Museum of Biblical Art, Dallas
Sometimes Scale Is Part of the Story
A photograph can’t quite explain what it feels like to stand in front of something this large.
Ron DiCianni’s The Resurrection Mural fills an entire wall. Figures, light, stone, witnesses, angels, Christ emerging from the tomb. What stayed with me wasn’t only the imagery. It was the scale of it. You have to physically look across it.
You don’t simply see the painting. For a few minutes, you stand inside its world.
The Resurrection Mural — Ron DiCianniMuseum of Biblical Art, DallasPhotographs by Tonya Bruton
The Part the Museum Label Doesn’t Tell
I came back.Once with Josh. Another time with Ben. Another time with my dad.Looking at these now, I realize I wasn’t only collecting photographs of artwork. I was collecting people I love standing in front of things I wanted them to see.
The Part the Museum Label Doesn’t Tell
This is my dad standing beside Thomas Blackshear II’s Forgiven.
Years before this photograph was taken, a print of this same image hung in the house where my father lived and sold drugs. That life eventually led to a twelve-year federal prison sentence for conspiracy to distribute drugs.
Much later, after prison and after returning to his Christian faith, I brought him with me to the Museum of Biblical Art. It was the first time in our lives that the two of us had ever done something like this together.
Then we found this painting.
I don’t really know what was happening inside him while he stood there, and I don’t want to pretend that I do. But I knew the history of that image. He knew it too. Standing there beside him felt quiet, strange, and sacred in a way I still have trouble explaining.
Forgiven — Thomas Blackshear II
Photographed by Tonya Bruton at the Museum of Biblical Art, Dallas
More Than Looking at Art
Some places become special because of what we see there. Others become special because of who we were with.
For me, the Museum of Biblical Art became both.
I came back more than once, and each visit carried a different memory. Josh and I stood in these galleries together, taking in paintings that made us slow down, look closer, and sometimes talk about things that had nothing to do with art.
Looking back, I realize the photographs I took weren't really just photographs of paintings.
They were photographs of moments in our lives.
Share Something You’ve Made
Art doesn’t have to be polished, professional, or hanging in a gallery to matter. Sometimes it’s a photograph you almost didn’t take, a painting made at the kitchen table, a sketch in the margin of a notebook, or something you created because you simply needed to make it.
I’d love for this space to occasionally hold work from other people, too.
If you have a painting, photograph, drawing, mixed-media piece, journal page, or other original work you’d like to share, send it my way. Tell me a little about what you made, what inspired it, or why it matters to you.
Selected pieces may be featured here on tonyabruton.com, with your name and any artist information or links you’d like included.
Want to share your work?
Send your artwork, a short description, and your preferred name/credit.
For the button, I’d use:
