Greg Constantine, professor emeritus at Andrews University, taught painting, drawing and art history for 45 years. During his career as an artist, Constantine has written many books about art and artists. He has also created license plate artwork, tube artwork, MANcities, ceramic sculptures, frame fragment artwork, and many other types of artwork. A handful of his artworks are featured around campus, some examples including "Picasso's Greatest Hits,” which is in the Buller Hall lobby, and some of his license plate artwork, which is featured in the English Department.
Because of an ongoing vision issue, macular degeneration, Constantine hasn’t been able to see his brush touch the canvas or his pencil touch the paper as well. He has begun to do more of what he calls “gesture paintings” as a result. Instead of making more intricate and very detailed artwork like he has done in the past, Constantine is working toward making more abstract and subtle artwork.
Recently, Constantine completed a collection of gesture paintings inspired by creation. What started out as abstract gesture paintings soon turned into something much more meaningful and significant. Constantine says, “As I superimposed one of these paintings, I superimposed a white dot, and all of a sudden it gave me a title, because I had no titles for any of these paintings. When I put this white dot on it, it was like something beginning, so the title I gave it was ‘In the Beginning,’ I thought of when God said, ‘let there be light,’ and there was light, so it was the beginning of that, and that's how it all started.”
When asked how long it took him to complete this collection of artwork, Constantine states, “My stock answer is it took me all my life.” He went on to say, “It goes to say that all the teachers and my parents and my whole experience up to that point went into that painting. So it wasn't like out of the blue. I'm just giving credit to generally all those people who influenced me in subtle and maybe not so subtle ways.”
Constantine’s “7 Days of Creation” artwork tells the story of when God created the world in a subtle and abstract way. Constantine says that the paintings are without a recognizable subject or object. This allows viewers to interpret and extract their own meaning from the artwork in their own way.
Constantine compares this approach to meeting someone new for the first time. “You don't know anything about their background, where they come from, who they are, anything, and so you get a first impression. It could be a bad one or could be a good one. Whatever the viewer brings with them when they are confronted by this artwork is what it means. It could mean nothing to them, or it could mean everything, so whatever the person brings to that artwork, it will be that they are on the same wavelength and understand what the artist is trying to do, or they miss the point altogether and walk away. You can't force anything.”
In terms of colors, most of the backgrounds of the “7 Days of Creation” artwork have vibrant colors. Constantine uses the color blue to represent the sky and water, and he uses green to represent vegetation. For night and day, he uses black and white for contrast. “Colors matter in terms of creating some kind of meaning,” Constantine says.
Constantine also used distinctive symbols to highlight specific days of creation. Constantine explains, “In these paintings, each one has a very thin line with a little loop on it that goes from one side of the canvas to the other. I like to think it's my way of expressing the voice of God.”
There are many other little symbols in each of the paintings as well. For “Day Three”, there is vegetation drawn. For “Day Four”, there is a sun or a moon or a planet represented. For “Day Five,” there is a little bird and fish gesture drawn. “Day Six” is a bit special. Constantine describes it saying, “The creation of Adam is a larger, bolder gesture of God reaching down and almost touching Adam, and that's a visual that we can't help but recall from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling, fresco, Creation of Adam. Everybody knows that, where the two fingers are about to touch, like a spark of life is going to go across there. And so that's what that is.”
For Constantine, “Day Seven” is the piece that stands out to him the most. The entire painting consists of only a blue formless orb. “It's just a blue color, and it doesn't have any action. It is where the world stops, where my world stops. It's symbolic of the Sabbath and of what God created.” Constantine states.
If people have time to only view one of the seven paintings in the collection, Constantine says he would want others to take time to look at “Day Seven”. Constantine will have his “Day Seven” painting featured at The Krasl Art Center in St. Joseph from Nov. 22, 2025, to Jan. 12, 2026.
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