Beauty of faith leads artist to create sacred art to draw others to God
Jay Parnell poses in front of paintings he has created. After being received into the full communion of the Church in 2020, Jay has sought to use his artistic talents to create sacred art to draw others closer to God and the Church. He is a member of Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary Parish in Indianapolis. (Submitted photo)
By Sean Gallagher
Creating beauty in a work of art can be mysterious and mystical.
The lines between the creator and the created can be blurred. Aspects of the life of the artist can affect and be manifested in what is created. At the same time, a work of art and the act of creating it can change its creator.
And for believers, hovering over it all is the work of the ultimate artist, God the Creator of all, who seeks in his providential designs to make a work of art of everyone.
During the past five years, Jay Parnell has entered into this mysterious and mystical web of relationships among artist, art, beauty and the Creator of them all.
Educated as a Protestant Christian at St. Joan of Arc School in Indianapolis in the 1970s and 1980s, Jay, along with his wife Kendra, was drawn to the Church by the beauty found in its worship and teachings.
They were received into the full communion of the Church in 2020 at Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary Parish in Indianapolis, where they continue to be parishioners.
A local artist known in the past for painting what he describes as “narrative portraits,” embracing the Catholic faith led Jay to use his God-given artistic skills to draw others through beauty to Christ and the Church, creating paintings of saints and other images of faith.
“When you see art, you let your defenses down,” he said. “You just release. All of this beauty comes to you through God’s voice of truth and beauty.
“For me, that’s why I’m slowly making the shift toward doing more sacred art. I want to not only make things that are beautiful, I want to paint things that are truthful and are beneficial for your soul.”
It took a long journey of faith and perseverance for Parnell to arrive at this point. And it’s that journey, which he has made with Kendra, that is its own work of art created by God.
The more Parnell recognizes that fact, the more he seeks to work with God in his own artistry.
“My art is an act of worship,” he said. “That’s why I pray every time before I paint. I ask for the grace to have my hands, heart and creativity in line with God’s will. That is my prayer in every single session.”
‘I was being catechized without even knowing it’
Little did he know at the time, but Parnell’s time at St. Joan of Arc School planted seeds of faith in him. They only came into full bloom decades later.
He saw the beauty of the faith every time he went into St. Joan of Arc Church with its classic Romanesque architecture, its soaring marble canopy over its main altar and mosaics adorning its side altars.
“I was being catechized without even knowing it,” Parnell recalled. “The beauty of the art and the sanctuary at St. Joan of Arc really influenced me deeply.”
In addition to experiencing the beauty of the faith portrayed in stone in the church, Parnell was also introduced to the beauty of a life shaped by the Catholic faith—even if it likewise took years for these lessons to sink in.
“I had a nun for a teacher,” he said. “I was a bad kid and didn’t really like her at the time. Now, as a grown man, I look back and say, ‘Sister Mary Ann had it right.’
“She was really subtle, but she was also effective. A lot of the things that I learned really stuck with me.”
Parnell grew up around art in his home. His father was an artist and his mother wrote poetry. He later majored in telecommunications at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind. His education led to employment as a photographer and illustrator while he worked as a painter on the side in Indianapolis in the 1990s.
While at Ball State, Parnell met Kendra. They married in 1995 and are the parents of three children and grandparents of two.
Staying committed to each other for nearly 30 years has required deliberate effort on their part, since their own extended families have been marked by divorce.
“We made a pact with each other a long time ago that we were never going to get divorced,” Kendra said. “We were going to stay true to our marriage, no matter what the problem was. We were going to work through it. And we taught our children the same thing.”
‘He’s the true artist’
Up until about 2019, Jay, Kendra and their family attended a variety of churches for periods in their life together. But none seemed to satisfy them.
“Everything had seemed so soft and not ready for this world,” Jay said. “What this world was bringing was very, very dark and strong. If you don’t have a muscular form of Christianity to combat it, you’re going to fall.”
Then the COVID-19 pandemic struck in early 2020.
“God took that opportunity to turn us around to something completely different that we had never thought of,” Kendra recalled.
That new form of worship for them was actually centuries old—the traditional Latin Mass.
During the pandemic, the couple became familiar with this form of the Mass online. Then they discovered that it was celebrated nearby at Holy Rosary.
“It was under our noses the whole time,” Kendra said.
“This is how God makes things possible,” Jay added.
“He’s the true artist,” said Kendra.
Saved by hope, and beauty
Not long after the Parnells were received into the Church at Holy Rosary in 2020, Father C. Ryan McCarthy, Holy Rosary’s pastor, commissioned Jay on behalf of the parish to create a painting of St. Josephine Bakhita.
Born in 1879 in what is now Sudan, Josephine was abducted as a child and sold into slavery, abused and tortured. She was eventually purchased by an Italian diplomat and later freed after moving to Italy with the family that saved her from slavery.
There she converted to Catholicism and became a Canossian sister in Venice in 1896. She died in 1947 and was declared a saint in 2000.
Father McCarthy chose St. Josephine as the subject of the work that the parish commissioned in part because of her connections to Italy, since Holy Rosary was founded by Italian immigrants to Indianapolis. But there was something more to her story that he wanted to share through Jay’s artistry.
“In her story, you see someone who’s overcome all kinds of evil and was able to fully embrace Christ in ways that seem unfathomable,” Father McCarthy said. “I thought she was a great example of hope to put before the eyes of my parishioners.”
Hope is a definite theme of the painting of St. Josephine that now hangs next to the sanctuary at Holy Rosary.
At the bottom of the painting are the Latin words, “Spe Salvi,” which in English means, “Saved by hope,” taken from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans (Rom 8:4). That’s also the title of a 2007 encyclical letter on hope by Pope Benedict XVI, in which the pontiff used the story of St. Josephine as an example of the power of Christian hope.
Above the words in the painting are seen a barefoot St. Josephine in her religious habit standing on a whip, a symbol of her previous life as a slave.
She stands in front of young Black children. Jay explained that he included the children in the painting because
St. Josephine is a patron saint of the victims of child trafficking, since she herself was such a victim.
“Working on this painting put me on the fast track to understanding my faith,” Jay reflected. “When the painting was in my home studio, I venerated her and prayed for her intercession before every painting session. Now I see her in the parish [church], and I still pray for her intercession. This has deepened my faith and sharpened my dedication to becoming a saint.”
More recently, Jay has created a painting of St. Thérèse of Lisieux and one of the late Benedictine Father Boniface Hardin, a Black monk of Saint Meinrad Archabbey in St. Meinrad who ministered for decades in the Black community in Indianapolis and who helped found Martin University on the city’s east side.
“This is only the beginning of my journey into the creation of sacred Catholic art,” said Jay. “My goal is to use my God-given artistic talents to promote the faith through the creation of beautiful art.”
(To view the work of Jay Parnell and for more information about his work as an artist, visit jayparnell.com.) †
