Dust and the Artist’s Eye: Charcoal, Erasure, and Mercy
Charcoal was one of my earliest teachers, though I didn’t recognize it as such at the time.
As a student, learning to work with charcoal felt completely foreign. I’m a planner by nature, someone who prefers order, clarity, and a sense of control. Charcoal offers none of that. It spreads, smudges, darkens quickly, and refuses to stay neatly where you put it. I struggled with it when I was young, impatient with its lack of precision. I suspect I would be better at learning its lessons now than I was then. Charcoal asks for release before it offers understanding.
One of the first things artists learn is that erasure is not failure. We erase constantly. It’s part of the process. One of the most important tools in working with charcoal is the kneaded rubber eraser. You don’t swipe with it. You shape it. You knead it in your hands, lifting away smudges and excess marks. When it grows dark with use, you knead it again, and it becomes clean, ready to keep working.
It’s a quiet metaphor: removal that restores rather than destroys. Attention that makes space instead of erasing meaning.
Ash Wednesday enters this conversation naturally. It is not a day that adds something new. It subtracts. Historically, ashes have been signs of repentance, humility, and mortality, marks made from what has already been burned down. Palms from the previous year are reduced to dust and returned to us with the reminder of who we are and what we are not.
The mark fades quickly. That impermanence is intentional. The theology of Ash Wednesday is not about decoration or permanence. It is about truth.
Mercy, like erasure, creates room. I think of the people who have done this for me. Some quietly, day after day; others at pivotal moments when I didn’t know how to move forward. They made space when I couldn’t. When I pause long enough to breathe, I can see how God continues to meet me where I am, not where I think I should be. The invitation isn’t to arrive polished or prepared. It’s simply to keep showing up.
As Lent approaches, this is what I carry with me. I’ve come to value seasons of preparation not as productivity, but as discernment. Lent invites us to notice what no longer serves us, what can be gently released. This year, that posture feels larger than the season itself. I moved from Michigan to Wisconsin.. Daily rhythms have shifted. Some old patterns no longer fit, and that isn’t something to resist. It’s something to pay attention to.
Letting go can be faithful work.
Charcoal taught me that making is not only about what we add. Faith teaches the same. Sometimes the most merciful thing is subtraction—space cleared so something truer can emerge.
May this season offer that kind of room.
