by James Patrick Reid.

Greater than the roar of mighty waters,

more glorious than the surging of the sea,

the Lord is glorious on high.

Truly thy decrees are to be trusted (Psalm 92/93:4)

Destructive floods might tempt one to question the Lord's governance of Creation or the trustworthiness of his decrees. But water holds a lesson for us, a lesson that was not lost on Leonardo da Vinci, whose drawings and notes explore the potential of moving water for good or ill. Leonardo discovered order within the apparent chaos and force of rushing water.

The association of water with chaos dates to the dawn of Creation: "And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep." (Genesis 1:2) In Scriptural imagery, deep water is the bastion of demons. Water represents all matter insofar as it is shapeless and chaotic, prone to rebellion, waiting to be formed and made luminous. In the beginning, the Spirit of God moved over the waters to bring order out of chaos, but then man's sin stirred back up the dark depths of rebellion.

In the end, the Lord will banish this abyss of darkness from the earth; the sea will be no more. (Apocalypse chapter 21: verse 1) Meanwhile, in His Passion and Resurrection, the paschal mystery into which we are baptized, the Lord divides the sea by His strength; He breaks the heads of the dragons in the waters. (Psalm 74:13)

Christ sanctifies the waters by His descent into the Jordan, an anticipation of His death whereby He defeats the devil. The illumined water becomes an instrument of salvation; and, as the Eastern Church sings on the feast of the Lord's Baptism, "today mystical waters water all creation."

In the victory of Christ, the dark, formless abysses are filled with light, and the transformation of all creation is revealed: "Behold, I make all things new." The redemption of man begins with the purification and redemption of matter, in the blessing of the water in which he is baptized, as the Lord "works salvation in the midst of the earth." (Psalm 74:12)

The work of artists imitates the Lord's forming and transforming work. An artist plunges his hands into rudimentary matter to transform it, drawing forth a higher and more luminous form. Form, in nature and in art, always results from movement and expresses movement.

Hence, the key to good drawing is the gesture, the movement of a form, and the choreography of thoroughly coordinated movements in any composite form or group of forms. Look, for example, at this landscape drawn by Thomas Gainsborough (in the Metropolitan Museum of Art).

The artist feels the movements of the hills and valleys like rolling waves, sweeping down from the right, recoiling and rising on the left. The rightward surge of the mountain is repeated and amplified by the bright shape in the sky and balanced by the left-leaning tree.

Or consider this watercolor by John Sell Cotman (in the British Museum).

The foreground sweeps in and back toward the factory whose rising smoke rhymes with cloud shapes that move across the sky toward the left, until these meet nearly vertical clouds set within a triangular zone of blue sky that brings us down to the pair of clouds, one gray and one bright and warm, that reach in from the left to balance and interlock with the large gray cloud that pushes from the right.

The bright cloud is augmented by the bright reflective river below it, reaching down and forward towards us on the left in balanced tension with the backward movement of the land on the right. The ship's tall mast, entrained by the mighty sweep of that land on the right, leans in its direction, threatening to unbalance the entire scene.

The bright cloud, however, grabs a hold of it to keep it from tilting any further. (Note that all the layers of space interact within the picture plane, just as near and far, past and present, interact in consciousness.) Balanced tensions manifest thorough organization of powerful forces.

In each of these artworks (as in thousand...