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Chances are you have seen Thomas Blackshear II's work somewhere-his "Star Trek" plates, his limited-edition prints sold by the Greenwich Workshop, or his work for Hallmark Cards, Coca-Cola, Lee jeans, and the National Geographic Society. Millions of Americans have licked his art-he contributed to three series of U.S. postage stamps: one commemorating great movies of 1939, another honoring America's black heritage, and one celebrating American jazz masters.

But it is his growing body of Christian paintings that pleases Blackshear most and has the greatest impact on people.

His Fan into Flame the Gift of God, commissioned by Promise Keepers, was distributed to men attending PK's clergy conference in Atlanta last February. And his Forgiven, which shows a compassionate Christ upholding a man with a hammer in one hand and a spike in the other, makes a powerful spiritual impact on viewers.

Blackshear spent two and one-half weeks seeking God's guidance for Forgiven. "My prayer was, 'Lord, you know what you want to say to your people. You know what you want me to paint,' " says Blackshear, who lives in

Colorado Springs with his wife of ten years, Ami, also a professional artist. Blackshear was worshiping at a church prayer meeting when the image for Forgiven flashed into his mind.

Jack Gollan, who describes himself as "not a go-to-church-every-Sunday Christian" from a mainline Protestant background, calls Forgiven "a painting that gets you in the back of the knees." He was so inspired by Blackshear's work that he converted a Colorado Springs frame shop he owns into the Blackshear Gallery. "There's a power coming into his work from above," says Gollan.

As Blackshear sees it, he does two kinds of work. There are his commercial commissions, which he discusses with his clients and executes with careful precision. And there are the Christian projects, which begin with fasting and prayer. He calls his Christian work "art of the spirit," because "it's art that touches the heart of the reality of who God is and what he's about."

Blackshear's Christian projects helped him emerge from a three-year period of exhaustion and depression during the early 1980s. This dark night of the soul was both spiritual and artistic, and it ended with a flash of inspiration in 1985. It was then, he says, that God first gave him an image for a painting called Night and Day showing a muscular black man emerging from a cocoon of darkness. The painting, which contains no explicit Christian references, began a new period of creativity for Blackshear, and it led him to begin seeking ways to integrate his faith in Jesus, his unique talent, and his African-American heritage.

His painting Coat of Many Colors, Lord of All depicts Jesus in a robe of patches representing various nationalities and races and showing that Christianity is more than a white man's religion. "I wanted to do a painting that represented every person in Christ and brought everybody together in Christ," he says. "It contains Jewish and Islamic symbols, and symbols from Polynesian, Eskimo, Celtic, Arabian, Asian, and American-Indian people. Everybody is in there."

Says Blackshear, "All I can say about my career is that it's the result of the blessings of God on my life."

By Steve Rabey. To contact the Blackshear Gallery, call (800) 314-4278 or (719) 473-3497.

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October 7 1996, Vol. 40, No. 11