Underground Churches Are Her Beneficiaries

   This is Duck Ae Karasek's studio where she paints and here is her story...

Special thanks to The Atlanta Journal Constitution for this story.

Duck Ae Karasek doesn't just practice what she preaches. She paints it, too.

The pastor-turned-painter says she sees the divine in her every work, even the ostensibly nonreligious collection of impressionist paintings that went on display last week at the Centerville Community Center near Snellville. The "Bounty of Summer" exhibit lasts through Sept. 28.

"I'm a prayer person," Karasek explained from the one-story Duluth home where she lives with her husband, 14-year-old son and more than 100 paintings. She motioned to one piece featuring a field hand with a hoe slung over his shoulders.

"Farmers are like pastors," she said. "The farmer all the time take out the stone, the weed. Pastors, they take out worry."

Karasek, 53, should know.

She worked as a pastor and professional artist in her native South Korea after graduating from the Dae Han Theological Seminary College in Seoul 23 years ago. Karasek ministered to prisoners, hospital patients and the handicapped. During a stint as an art instructor and missionary at a Korean orphanage, she met her husband, Mark, who was on a mission trip.