News and Views

Stations of the Cross sidewalk murals

Wade Forbes' sidewalk murals

By: Melissa Lauber

When Wade Forbes was exploring career fields, the idea of drawing on his artistic skills and abilities didn’t feel like the best path. But then, almost two decades later, God got into his art – and now he’s living something that once only felt like a dream, and that dream is rippling out into the world. 

After graduating from two years of art school in the 1990’s, Forbes worked briefly as a special education teacher and then for 16 years in the field of cyber security. When the pandemic hit two years ago, it offered him an opportunity to try something new. He began to see himself as a professional illustrator. 

It wasn’t that much of a stretch. Each Sunday at St. Paul’s UMC in Sykesville, Forbes set out his markers on the pew and illustrated the worship experience in his journal – from the announcements to the Scripture readings, through to the insights from the sermon.

He expanded on that practice and began drawing every day – illustrating quotations for social media, honing his craft, and doing freelance work making visual recordings of corporate meetings and events. He has 745 three-by-three inch post-it notes he’s drawn during the pandemic. Each one teaches him something.

He often finds his work “ripples.” People in church, including his children, share their thoughts about the drawings he makes during worship.

The most recent ripples came with his painting scenes from the Stations of the Cross on the sidewalks by the garden outside of St. Paul’s UMC. The church’s associate pastor, Tiffany Patterson, wanted to offer a new way of observing Holy Week. Forbes hadn’t planned on the installation, but one thing led to another, and he offered his gifts to the project.

It was, he said, “one of the most emotional things I’ve ever done as an artist.”

During the creation of the project, his father was in the hospital. Passers-by would stop and talk with Forbes, reflecting on the feelings his paintings elicited. Making the pictures, bringing the scenes of the Christ’s last days to life, gave Forbes new insights into his faith. It became personal. “It was a blessing in so many ways,” he said.

“It was gut-wrenching at times,” Forbes explained. “I never imagined how I would have behaved if I was one of Jesus’ disciples. Would I have had the courage to stand up and try to stop what was happening? Had I not painted it, I probably wouldn’t have thought about it. So, now I think, where do I need to stand up for people who don’t have a voice? How do I make sure that people aren’t silenced? …  I’ve never been one to quote Scripture, but after painting or illustrating a story, it begins to make sense in a different way.”

Illustrating St. Paul UMC’s worship services in his journal helps Forbes remember. It also takes him out of the realm of “audience” and makes him an active participant in the liturgy. He is excited about how the laity all around him can also use their own unique gifts and abilities to make faith come alive in unexpected ways.

For Forbes, illustrating in church and in his new business endeavors is all about doing small things with great care and purpose. Focusing on just one step at a time has provided a path into the future, he said. Rather than trying to accomplish something enormous, all at once, he’s found that “all the little things add up to something great.”

Forbes is not sure where the little things are leading, but after reading Jane Goodall’s “The Book of Hope,” he sees himself on “a quest to spread hope. Hope is an action, not necessarily an emotion,” he said.

With each little action that hope ripples out into people’s lives, and Forbes feels like his art is making a difference. “I think my future,” he said, “may be making as many of these ripples as possible.”

If you would like to learn more about Wade Forbes and his art, you can find him on Instagram at @wadeforbes, on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/wadeforbes/, or read more about his small creative services micro business RedTale Communications at www.redtale.com.