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Steven Schroeder

in the absence of god from Steven Schroeder

Paintings from In the Absence of God, which gathers poems written between 2003 and 2021 with paintings completed between 2011 and 2020. Some of the poems have previously appeared in print, some have been published online, and some appear in this collection for the first time. Most of the painti... more

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the absolute absence of god by Steven Schroeder
  • Steven Schroeder
  • the absolute absence of god, 2017
  • Acrylic On Canvas
  • 24 x 36 x 0.75 in

I began to contemplate the incarnation as God’s disappearance into humanity under the influence of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and F.D. Maurice. Bonhoeffer’s early scholarly writing (and the poetry he wrote at the end of his life) and Tom Sheehan’s The First Coming led me to connect that contemplation with Luther’s theology of the cross and the Heideggerian idea of the absolute absence of God. As a poet and as a painter, I have explored that connection in relation to silence and emptiness, often in terms of what light does on edge. “The Absolute Absence of God” (one in a series of three paintings completed for a “light and shadow” exhibit in the path of totality during the August 2017 total eclipse) returns to the theme.

published with "Mind Field," by Robert L. Dean, Jr. in KYSO Flash, Issue 12: Summer 2019 [http://www.kysoflash.com/Issue12/DeanMindfield.aspx]

included in the 2017 “Light and Shadow” exhibit at the Mildred M. Cox Gallery, William Woods University, Fulton, Missouri.

  • Collections: abstracts, acrylic