I remember standing in my room as a young kid, maybe nine or ten, looking intently at my hands. At that time I lived at my old house in Kopervik, a small town on an island on the southwest coast of Norway. My room’s walls were a calm white with a barely noticeable pink tint, the curtains a soft maroon-purple, and behind my hands the warm sun hit the light oak-wood floor. I’m not sure what I had been doing before that moment, but I have a stark memory of studying my hands. I saw my palms, my outstretched fingers and all of the tiny lines in them, the sunlight reflecting off the floor and onto the sides of my skin. I rotated my hands and saw the backs of them. Standing there silently, I realized the control I had over them, as if I had never realized it before. I could move. Somehow. I was moving. Without thinking or consciously deciding to, I could move. It was a control I couldn’t understand. I felt my mind move to a place it hadn’t been before. This is real. Here I am, when I could be nothing. This isn’t a dream or a memory. My world exists over the backdrop of a void, a void that has been filled, and I am in it. I felt dizzy after; like when you stand up too fast, almost like a mental zoom-out. I think that was the first time I really became aware of my existence.
Figure 1 A watercolor painting I made at ten years old, featuring my sister and I stargazing on a hill
Growing up, I had a strong interest in drawing. When I scribbled out an intelligible horse onto paper at seven years old, my parents said I was amazing. I became convinced I was a prodigy based on their reactions. So, as encouraged things do, my interest in drawing and art grew. I drew, and drew, and drew, but I remember as I grew older and continued to pursue art, I would find it almost impossible to capture the true beauty of the world I saw around me. Norway was incredible. Stepping outside I could smell the ocean, the stone, the pine trees, and all around me were vast chains of grand blue mountains. I began to feel that I could never capture the weight of it on paper; I could never recreate the pure amazement it awoke in me. My fifth-grade teacher, Snefrid, once admired my drawing of a fish. I was sitting in my classroom, in a rural primary school of about two hundred students. It was a little room, with dated Scandinavian furnishings, smelling of wood, rain, and paper, but feeling warm, giving the impression of the color yellow. I was working on a group project with some of my peers. As Snefrid walked around the classroom, she noticed and gazed at a colored-in doodle on the back of my assignment paper. “I was complimented by her interest, but unfazed by it. She looked very seriously at me and said “Hannah, tenker du om kunst som job?” (“Are you considering art as a career?”) With a blank stare on my face, and in a very child-like fashion, I pondered her question and shrugged. I remember thinking My drawing is ok, but the fish I drew is nothing like a real one. Although, I didn’t think this word for word, rather, I felt that the interest a viewer might have in my art could not compare to the fascination I felt when I saw a live fish.
By the time I moved to the United States and began junior high school. my awareness of the world grew, and my motivation for drawing began to come from a place of wonder. If my subject didn’t look exactly like the thing that awoke awe in me, it didn’t matter what my parents said, I wouldn’t be happy with it. I continued to pursue art, though, because nothing else could quite satisfy my obsession with what I saw. My art became like a journal, used to process the things I experienced. It became more than a hobby, especially upon entering high school. I met Ms. Lim, my art teacher, who instilled in me the perspective of art as poetry. I once wrote, “To me, art is like a poem written with colors and lines instead of words, and, despite language barriers, anyone can read and interpret it.” Ms. Lim taught me how to see the deeper themes behind a piece. Even if the painting was of a lily, an aspect of the artist was showing from beneath it. Because of Ms. Lim, art grew into a way that I expressed myself, a way to show what I valued, and a way through which I understood others.
Figure 2 A drawing of a snake made in Ms. Lim’s art class during ninth grade, and a charcoal drawing of a cloth made in tenth grade
Whenever I began an artwork after this, my goal was to draw hyper-realistically, to capture the image as clearly as I could see it in front of me. What caused me to want to draw this way, I think, was my sense of wonder, because I noticed myself studying my subject like I once studied my hands. My subject, sometimes a cloth, other times an animal or landscape, would completely consume me. There it was, neatly woven together by particles smaller than I could see, bound together by mysterious forces, and, between the atoms, there was nothing. In studying chemistry, I learned that if the nucleus of an atom were scaled up to the size of a marble, the nucleus of the closest atom would be about four-hundred meters away, never touching nor even “seeing” each other. While drawing, I considered this fact, that most of my subject was nothing, and yet, I could still hold it, see it, and experience it.
I started to see the world in the same way I saw a painting. Behind each brush stroke, I perceived intentionality. Within each frame, I saw emotion, a story, a deeply intelligible meaning that connected me to the artist than simply speaking with them would. I could piece together their inner thoughts, their life. It could be grief, joy, loneliness, or wonder. Eventually I felt that I saw a creator through this creation, an artist behind the things I would re-create in my drawings. I came to realize my own creations were a mere copy of His; they reflected my awe of this creator, and that from the time I studied my hands and observed His craftsmanship, I had been in relationship with him Him my whole life. I had been reflecting on His art since I was little, and without realizing it I had been searching for the artist showing from beneath the painting.
I moved to Boston for college a few months ago, and last semester traveled to New Hampshire for a campus ministry retreat. The camp was nestled within a forest, next to a large lake. It had been five years since the move from Norway; I missed it terribly, and when I stepped out onto the shore of the lake, I experienced a familiar scene. The overwhelming sight of grand, beautiful, blue mountains, the smell of pine and stone, and the sensation of cold sand beneath my feet. With a fierce yet freeing wind in my face, and the sound of the gorgeous, pure, turbulent water in my ears, I was overcome with a deep connection to this greater artist. I see you in this. I thought, I see your wholeness. I feel your beauty, your power, your love for this creation. I bit my lip, trying to contain the emotion, and tears ran down my face.
Two weeks ago, on a Sunday, I was looking for a way to end this essay. I would, of course, do this after church. After I arrived in Boston last August I began exploring different churches, but I hadn’t yet found the right one. I had gone to Park Street Church on the previous Sunday and wanted to attend service there again. So, I made my way to Boston Common to the front steps of Park Street Church, walked inside, and sat down in one of the old, hardwood pews. As we stood to sing that morning, I opened the hymn book to the specified page, and read:
Figure 3 My drawing of a tree in front of MIT’s student center, made during my freshman year of college
1 This is my Father’s world,
And to my listening ears
All nature sings, and round me ringsThe music of the spheres.
This is my Father’s world:
I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas—His hand the wonders wrought.
2 This is my Father’s world:
The birds their carols raise,
The morning light, the lily white,Declare their Maker’s praise.
This is my Father’s world:
He shines in all that’s fair;
In the rustling grass I hear Him pass,He speaks to me everywhere.
Again, I was reminded of the awe and wonder I felt when I saw the lake in New Hampshire. It was like a moment of personal revelation; I knew I was not alone.
Acknowledgements
To my group members Heyang “Felicity” Nie, Sean-Winston Luo, and Lars Spinetta. Thank you for supporting my personal development during this essay, adding value to my writing, and providing much needed insight and feedback. Your contributions helped shape this essay into a meaningful, fun, and, thankfully, readable piece.
Works Cited
Babcock, Maltbie Davenport. “This Is My Father’s World.” Hymnary.Org, 329 Hymnals, hymnary.org/text/this_is_my_fathers_world_and_to_my. Accessed 10 Mar. 2025.
