I have a passion for beauty, wherever I find it.  Colors, subtle forms, sinuous lines, shapes, textures—they are a constant obsession with me. The world around us has so much beauty, but most of us have not learned to see it properly.

I have been interested in visual beauty, and more specifically, in visual art since childhood.  When I came to Jesus in 1964, I discovered that God expressed and was the highest form of beauty.  He, indeed, is the Great Artist, and I now believe that He is as obsessed with beauty too, but with Him beauty is not just butterflies, flowers and sunsets, but moral and spiritual perfection.

Beauty and truth are linked, as poets have pointed out.  The Bible, thus, is the most beautiful book in the world, and in my Bible art, I have sought to express a little of that beauty.

In illuminated calligraphy, all my visual passions find their expression.  There is a fusion of a number of elements.  One is geometric form.  I have studied the forms created by the Moors, the Celts, and the Chinese.  My geometric vocabulary is drawn from these sources, but I have tried to make it my own, creating a personal visual language.  All the borders and designs in the pieces are my own creations.

Another element of this fusion is my love of the natural world.  I have studied wildflowers, trees, insects, and marine life.  Rare and exotic wildflowers are often found in my pieces.  The presence of snails grows out of my interest in shells.

The best way I can describe my approach to the art of illumination is to say that I see myself as a jeweler making a setting for gems of priceless value.  The geometric forms, the flowers, butterflies, snails, birds, the richly ornamented initial letters, the sinuous curvilinear ornament, the interplay between all these elements—these are the parts of the setting, but the eternal truth of God’s word is the gem.  My art will pass, but His beauty, His truth lasts forever.

About myself, personally, there is little I wish to say.  I let my art do most of the talking.  I am happy with my wife, Carol.  Apart from her, despite occasional lapses into grumbling about various things, for which I am always repenting, I am quite content with my lot, and not too envious of anyone.  I am mostly self-taught as an artist, entirely self-taught as a calligrapher, and have had no teacher to guide me in my explorations of geometric form.  Sometimes, I lament my lack of technical training, but it is too late to do much about it now.

View the Artwork

All artwork shown has been dramatically reduced in size to allow reasonable speed download.  Full resolution scans from the originals will be available as high-resolution prints of various sizes.  Please let us know if you are interested in purchasing a print by clicking on Contact Us button above.  Please indicate what size you are interested in receiving:

Printed on 8.5x11 fine art paper:  $29 + $4.95 shipping
Printed on 13x19 fine art paper:  $79 + $8.95 shipping

You can enter your order here.  Enter price and shipping from above, and for the description, "Illustrated Verse xxxx on AxB fine art paper" where xxxx is the verse, and AxB is the size.

Below is a list of the available artwork.  Click on the verse of interest.  Or, go to the first verse, and use the Next and Previous buttons to navigate within the illustrated verse pages themselves.  Each page includes a brief comment from the artist on the verse content and the artwork.

Richard Trefrey continues from left column...

I am a reactionary, old-fashioned painter.  There are times when I think I would have been more comfortable living in another time and place:  an ancient Celtic monastery assisting with the Book of Kells, the golden age of Florence, the Vienna of Mozart and Beethoven, the Paris of Renoir and Monet.  However, God has put me square in the middle of a culture of pop-barbarism, in a prosperous nation that has forgotten Him, in an age like no other before, when the natural world itself teeters on the blink of oblivion.  I think it is the time of the end, and that God is sweeping the world free of sin and corruption in order to bring in a new age, a restoration of Eden, the New Jerusalem, a more perfect beauty that will replace the current disorder.  Come, Lord Jesus!