The Painted Parish - The Mall Galleries

The Mall Galleries is currently "presenting a rare exhibition of new and recent paintings exploring Britain’s churches, chapels and cathedrals by members of the Federation of British Artists.

The Painted Parish features paintings exploring British Churches, examining notions of place and time, life and loss, as well as faith and worship.

The poet John Betjeman wrote in his poem Churchyards, 'Our churches are our history shown / In wood and glass and iron and stone'. Here, though, Britain’s ecclesiastical buildings are rendered in watercolour, oil, pastel, and more, inside and out, as places of worship, sites of construction, iconic status or desolate ruin.

Exhibiting artists include members of the country’s leading national art societies, the Royal Society of British Artists (RBA), the Royal Society of Portrait Painters (RP), and the Royal Institute of Oil Painters (ROI), amongst others.

An illustrated e-catalogue accompanies the exhibition, featuring a foreword by Dr Timothy Brittain-Catlin, Reader in Architecture at the University of Kent and author of Churches: Explore the Symbols, Learn the Language and Discover the History (Harper Collins, 2008)."

While an interesting collection of images, the 'parish' is seen almost exclusively in terms of the church building rather than either the people or the geographical area. Works by Lisa Graa Jensen, which integrate area, building and people, then stand out as the primary exception to this general rule of thumb.

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John Betjemen - Christmas.