In the weeks leading up to the Advent season, I will be offering profiles of three art-makers now joining my Sacred Artists listings, whose distinctive cultural backgrounds and global views greatly add to the diversity of the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection. This week's new Artist in Profile has the distinction of being the first in my collection to come from Albania, a nation long closed to the outside world under an oppressive Communist regime. Hari Mitrushi was born marked with the brand of “an enemy of the people" because of his family's political and economic views and involvement in the Albanian Evangelical Christian church. Despite official persecution, he remained true to his faith and witnessed the fall of Communism in his homeland, eventually immigrating with his family to Thessaloniki, Greece. A largely self-taught artist, Mitrushi pays homage to a variety of masters of Western art from Rembrandt to Oskar Kokoschka in his work. He sees his art-making as a way of "thanking [the Lord] for being with us, when we passed through the Valley of the Shadow of Death." (John Kohan)