Each year in a village called Anna Paulowna, in the Netherlands, there is a flower festival where paintings made of real flowers are displayed. The Tulip Festival or, “Flower Days” brightens the narrow streets and alleyways with beautiful and often larger than life works of art comprised entirely of flowers. For several years a small church in Anna Paulowna has featured a flower mural of Christian artist Danny Hahlbohm’s paintings. Danny Hahlbohm, the artist of the famous painting “Footprints In The Sand” has once again granted permission to Lighthouse Ministries to use one of his paintings as their mural in the 2014 Flower Days festival.
Jacky Baken of Lighthouse Ministries says, “We believe that we are living in the most liberal part of Holland. There are very few Christians living in this area. During this festival my family wanted to share the gospel through our murals. What better way than with the artwork of Danny Hahlbohm, one of the leading Christian artists of our time.”
“Through the years,” she adds, “we gained respect and now we are called ‘the people of the mosaic’ because we have Christian pictures as our predominant display. Tourist buses drive by, hundreds of cars, motorbikes and people on bicycles, all taking in this beautiful artwork made of flowers each year. For the past ten years we’ve always been close to the top in winning awards. When we did ‘The Passion’ by Danny Hahlbohm we were second place in the festival. We have used at least three pictures by Danny Hahlbohm including ‘At The Helm’ and ‘Welcome Home’ and look forward to using more of Hahlbohm’s images.”
Baken explains, that the church is small, but gets help each year from Americans and Germans – some making it a mission trip to Holland to help create the flower murals for the festival. Each painting takes three whole days with twelve people working to create the art with flowers. “It’s mostly done during the last weekend of April or the first weekend of May. It was never this early but the weather was so warm that the flowers came early,” she adds.
To learn more about the artist Danny Hahlbohm and see his artwork please go to: http://inspired-art.com/inspiredartworks/home.html. For more information about “Flower Days” visit: www.bloemendagen.nl.