The work “Angel in the Forest’ took me over 5 years to complete. It began as a simple idea to do a landscape of the forest in my backyard on the Scarborough Bluffs that overlook Lake Ontario. You get the most incredible fog that rolls up  through the ravine off the lake that I wanted to capture in a very large painting. The underpainting or sketch is actually of  the forest and trees. Sometime during the process of applying the many layers of paint I had the idea to put an angel in to the forest. I am not too sure why. It just happened. For months and years I continued to add layers but I could never quite finish the painting. Something was missing, again I wasn’t too sure what. In the fall of 2007 I experienced two significant events, the loss as a candidate in the provincial election, followed shortly after by the breakdown of my 22 year marriage. I entered a very dark and foreboding place. A place where “the undergrowth was choking me and the trees around were bent with menace”. When I emerged from that place in amongst the trees I knew I was ready to finish the painting.  In early July of 2008 I entered my studio and in less then a week the “Angel in the Forest” was complete. 

My Minister and good friend who was witness to the entire process wrote the following that best describes the painting,

The painting “Angel in the Forest” has been both a work and a life in progress. I recall seeing her in her early days sitting alone and vulnerable on the new canvas. Her classical features spoke of timeless beauty. Little did I know she would become lost in layers of life, colour upon colour, running, flowing, changing, blending, clashing. Little did the artist know it either.

    Now she stands complete, as all angels do, a little hidden, a bit obscure, and always mysterious. I am deeply pleased to know she is there among the challenges of wilderness. I have experienced her on occasion when the undergrowth was choking me and the trees around were bent with menace.

     It is said that true symbols choose us. The theme of angels emerged in cultures when cosmic contact seemed too far away and its expressions unhelpful. Yet, as living beings we all carry stories of new hopes, miraculous encounters, and changes of heart. These are our deep daily bread.

     Symbols still choose us, so, when we see the Angel in the forest we recognize in it, ourselves, our situation and the nearness of our rescue. The colours are right, the constriction certainly feels real, and the lady herself is as full of grace and truth as any dear friend we might meet in the clearing of our dearest longings.

The Rev. Dr. Malcolm Sinclair

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When you hear the term “angel” what do you visualize or think of ?  If you are of the 70’s and late 90’s generation you may well think of “Charlies Angels”.  How often have you referred to someone, whether a child or someone close, “you are my angel”, or my “precious angel” ? Have you ever been in a position of possible peril or harm and for some strange reason you back away or are “saved” and you thank your “guardian angel” ? Whatever your religious or spiritual beliefs angels do evoke a response, a reaction and a feeling .

Below are a few descriptions I took from a quick internet search. I invite you to share your thoughts, stories, impressions and beliefs about angels. Do they exist? What do they mean to you?

 “Angels are among the unseen in the “all that is, seen and unseen” that the Nicene Creed says the Father created. They can think and hold conversations, and they have their own identity. And they appear to people of all religions, even those of no religion at all.  No one can prove angels exist; they are, after all, spiritual beings and don’t fit into material-world rules. Not all religious folks believe in angels. (for instance, the Jewish Sadducees, and many modernist Christians). But those who have a strong sense of spirituality tend to believe angels are real, and sometimes experience their presence. Thus there are many angel reports from India, Malaysia, and other Asian countries.”

“Angels are not there to be meddling fix-its, but our helpers in responding to the truth. Angels guide us in a way towards a specific situation, sometimes calling us to take a specific action. We can just blow them off, but people usually find themselves responding instantly with some amount of trust, comfort, or awe.”

From Wikepedia,

A 2002 study based on interviews with 350 people, mainly in the UK, who said they have had an experience of an angel, describes several types of such experiences: visions, sometimes with multiple witnesses present; auditions, e.g. to convey a warning; a sense of being touched, pushed, or lifted, typically to avert a dangerous situation; and pleasant fragrance, generally in the context of somebody’s death. In the visual experiences, the angels described appear in various forms, either the “classical” one (human countenance with wings), in the form of extraordinarily beautiful or radiant human beings, or as beings of light.

In the US, a 2008 survey by Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion , which polled 1,700 respondents, found that 55 percent of Americans belief including one in five of those who say they are not religious, believe that they have been protected by a guardian angel during their life. An August 2007 Pew poll found that 68 percent of Americans believe that “angels and demons are active in the world”.

In Canada, a 2008 survey of over 1000 Canadians found 67 per cent believe in angels.