Article

UNVEILED Artist Insights—Jovita Hogan

April 28, 2021

Everything I do, I try to ask and listen to God. I just listen to him. He has trained me over the years to hear him and to use my gifts. I give God permission to use me and tell me what to do – and he gives me treasure.

For her day job, Jovita Hogan works in a research office that studies why African Americans are so hesitant to get a COVID-19 vaccine, along with other health concerns.

A number of years ago, she heard God call her to start painting. Describing her calling to art she said, “I wanted to go to college for art, but I was discouraged by the people around me. Occasionally, I would take little classes here and there… But then a spiritual leader at my church told me directly, ‘Sister Jovita, I hear the Holy Spirit saying to paint.’ I hadn’t painted since high school. I struggled with it. I pondered it. But the Holy Spirit clearly was calling me to paint.”

Jovita listens to God as she works on every piece. Her experience with God in this process is very intimate. Sometimes God directs her very brush strokes, she says. “I remember one painting I was doing, I had some music going on, and I was in a zone. I said OK Lord, what are we going to do? He just gave me colors. And this painting came out. To me it looked like it was under the sea, where the plant life is moving back and forth ever so gently, and it was just beautiful.  When different people saw it, though, they saw other things. That showed me that different people can look at a picture and God will show them different things…things that are meaningful to them…things I don’t see at all. I just listen to them and take in the wonder of that.”

“Sometimes God just blows my mind!”

The name of her business was inspired by God, too—Jovita’s Treasures, she says, comes straight out of Matthew 6:21 (NIV)— For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Jovita reflects on the immediacy of God’s presence in her work, the sense that He delights in her delight in painting. “Everything I do, I try to ask and listen to him. I just listen to Him. He has trained me over the years to hear him and to use my gifts. I give God permission to use me and tell me what to do – and he gives me treasure. I thank God for the fact that these treasures bless other people.”

The freedom Jovita experiences in her art is akin to the freedom she clearly experiences in feeling loved by her Creator.

When you come to UNVEILED Prayers of the People, we pray you will not only see some of Jovita’s Treasures but also experience some of the joy she has in their creation.