Hi, I'm Faith Horst.
I’m an artist
based in Lititz, PA.
This is my story.
“This is meaningless…” I thought numbly, staring into the muddy paint water as I swirled my brush around the cup. I had just quit my full-time job to pursue a career in fine art. I loved the craft itself, and the attention it had gotten me all throughout my life. Not many kids my age had the skill I did, and I threw myself into the art business starting in middle school, drawing and painting religiously every day, and taking every commission I could get. During high school, I studied at the amazing Carlin Academy of Fine Art, where I was trained in classical realism with graphite drawing and oil painting, and I graduated after 3 years.
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And yet, as much as I loved it all, I was slipping into depression. Most nights, I cried myself to sleep. Most days, I was devoid of joy. I remember various times wishing that I wasn’t alive anymore. I enjoyed creating, but perfectionism, performance, and comparison were always at my throat, judging me, and slowly sucking the life out of my creative process. The more skilled I became, and the more hours I spent in my isolated home studio, the more I felt that my art– what’s more, my life– was completely meaningless.
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“If God is real, there must be something I’m missing,” I thought to myself. So, I set art aside, and decided to go headlong into pursuing this mysterious divine being. That’s when I found a place called Gateway House of Prayer, and decided to take their Embark Internship. For the first few weeks of the internship, I struggled immensely with seemingly being unable to hear God’s voice or experience anything supernatural. Then one evening, in a quiet little corner of the prayer room, laying on the floor, I met Jesus Himself. It’s hard to explain, because I didn’t see Him or feel Him touch my skin. But, it was as if He reached into my heart, sorted through my core, found the deepest, darkest, most pain-filled loneliness in me, and gave it a warm hug. Since then, I have been completely transformed.
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During my time at Gateway House of Prayer, I met a woman named Priscilla Williams. She is a wonderfully wild, and deeply grounded purple-haired artist in her 70’s, who eventually became my mentor. “Art is the language of the heart… HE-ART… His heart,” she carefully explained, as I stared at her blankly, not understanding a word of what she was saying. It took months of searching God’s heart to realize that He (the all-powerful Creator of the universe!) wanted to communicate with me… through visual art, of all things.
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So, drawing and painting became my prayer language and my song of worship. It also became a means through which God began to speak unfathomable things to me. As He and I further developed this dialogue of imagery together, my true identity became unlocked. As He spoke to me, challenged me, and poured His love on me, I strangely found myself crying tears of joy nearly every day instead of soaking my pillow with sadness. I came to find that nothing in all of existence is better than Him.
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I can now say that I have a specific calling over my life: to express the beauty of God’s heart on earth as in heaven through fine art. In 2022, I joined the staff team at Gateway House of Prayer as their Creative Arts Coordinator, and I’ve had the joy of seeing countless people (both artists and self-declared non artists) be unexplainably refreshed and set free through creative encounters with the Holy Spirit. It is my mission to display the beauty of the love I have found, and to depict the visions and dreams He gives me.
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Praise God!
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Please feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you may have in the form below! And check out my Instagram (@works.of.faith) to see my latest work!