Beyond the power of words

I have a new article published today on the Transpositions blog entitled 'Walter Navratil: Beyond the Power of Words'.
Walter Navratil was an Austrian artist whose work shows the influence of Art Brut and which explores the incidence and impact of mental distress. This exploration is, however, always shot through with Christian concepts, themes and images focused on suffering, its endurance and redemption.

Transpositions is a collaborative effort of students associated with the Institute for Theology, Imagination, and the Arts at the University of St Andrews, voted runner-up as Best Newcomer Blog in the Christian New Media Awards 2010.

Its organisers write:

"On one level, transpositions connotes our goal to create conversations between Christian theology and the arts. Just like a musician might transpose from the key of B flat Major to C Major in order to create beautiful music with other instruments, we desire to transpose from the mode of theology to the arts and from the arts to theology in order to create meaningful resonances. Transpositions also brings to mind placing images and ideas of varying opacity over one another so that from particular points of view they appear to blend without distinction, creating a new form of beauty. On yet another level, transpositions suggests the nature of both art and theology as a transposition of divine reality into earthly form. As C. S. Lewis concluded in his brilliant essay entitled ‘Transposition,’ our glimpse of God through embodied transpositions and our taste of true reality in the present gives us hope that one day we will experience the fullness of beauty."

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Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris - Love Hurts.