My summary points from a talk given to the spouses of vicars-in-training earlier this week: Art is not just decoration for the more serious business of the Word – background visual element to church life. Art is part of the Word. Incarnational, material. Christ is the image of God, holding everything that is created together. […]
Manifesto for the arts Read More »
Just started reading Martin Palmer’s ‘The Sacred History of Britain’ – soon to launch his ‘Sacred Land’ book at St Stephen’s Church next week. The landscape around us in terms of geography and man’s design is a relationship characterised by sacred elements – we can’t just read it as a process of urbanisation and technology.
Reflecting on ‘earth’ for spirituality Read More »
Thursday’s being my normal day for a blog post, Friday involves small chunks of work around my little girl. So the nature of working changes when you’re a mum, no big surprises there. But it means you manage your thinking, your handling of ideas, your creating, your breaks with a greater awareness of your limits.
A little work friend Read More »
From Beate Gütschow’s ‘LS’ series, the text below is from The Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago: Beate Gütschow’s exploration as an artist directly probes questions of pictorial representations of reality. As a student in Hamburg and Oslo, she explored verisimilitude initially as a painter and installation artist and eventually became attracted to photography for
I’m on a balancing line with these – a new series of 6 globes, each of a different habitat. Creation is beautiful and good, but also fractured and threatened. I can’t see where the resolution of the image should sit, both in terms of its meaning and its look. What role has sight in this
Habitat series, ‘Forest Globe’ work-in-progress Read More »
Lenses and their use pre-Reformation was often considered heretical, whether in camera obscura ‘shows’ (Arnold of Villanova in 1300), Roger Bacon’s ideas, Della Porta on painters’ secret tools. How do you trust something that so distorts plain sight? Hockney says this was actually about power, as wielded by the church. The power over lens-based media
New Year musings, with David Hockney Read More »
During the ascent in the balloon at heights of 500 to 1,000 metres over the ground, we were especially enchanted by the shining, full, lush blaze of colours revealed by the earth below us. Far and wide, the forests appeared as the most gleaming, greenest moss or like glorious green velvet. … But as we
Quote collage from this week’s reading Read More »
We all know that the image-saturated world we live in is invested with meaning – if seeing is believing, there’s a lot of faith circulating in 21st century culture, from high art to popular screen culture. But this believing is in a very obvious sense ‘religious-free’ – it’s not about the doctrine or creed of
Jacob’s Ladder – a view to look at art from Read More »
Starting point (as commissioned by my brother): A reflection piece, has to be portrait format, incorporating ‘upside-down-ness’ and water’s reflections. This photograph was taken at Monet’s waterlily pond at Giverny, in 2008 on a family holiday. The day was sunny with a few clouds, my camera was a Nikon D50. We had some fun trying
A Monet tribute – happy birthday Steve! Read More »
David Mach’s exhibition (30 July – 16 October 2011, City Art Centre, Edinburgh) brings together a multitude of work on biblical themes, timed as it is to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the King James translation. There are over 40 pieces, of which 5 are sculptures and the remainder are predominantly large-scale photographic collages. The
David Mach ‘Precious Light’ review Read More »
