Malcolm Guite is a much-loved English poet, singer-songwriter, Anglican priest, and academic. Born in Nigeria to British expatriate parents, Guite earned degrees from Cambridge and Durham universities. His research interests include the intersection of religion and the arts, and the examination of the works of Shakespeare, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, and British poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Donne and George Herbert. He is currently a Bye-Fellow and chaplain of Girton College, Cambridge and associate chaplain of St Edward King and Martyr in Cambridge. His poetry offers not only deep insight into our Christian faith but also humour and shows his own irrepressible imagination. We hope this day will be will be a day of inspiration for your own imagination and creativity.
The day began with Morning Song led by our Choral Scholars and continued with an introduction and talk 'The Imagination Bodies Forth' by the inspirational priest and poet Malcolm Guite. Following Q&A and small group reflections, Great Sacred Music was led by Sam Wells, Andrew Earis and St Martin’s Voices. Malcolm Guite then spoke on 'Finding your own form - how we can use our own imagination'. This was followed by sessions on using our imagination:
For the Art Project participants are asked to construct a geometric star. All of the stars will vary in size and complexity adding to the overall mesmeric and spatial pattern. All the stars will form part of a large wall hanging based on Giotto’s fresco of stars on the ceiling of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. Stars are a symbol of truth, spirit and hope and are seen as something beautiful, good and positive. Stars can also be a symbol that embodies the notion of spiritual revelation in each of us. We hope that the finished piece will look beautiful and positive and a sign of hope for us all.
In the session on 'Using our Imagination in Art,’ Andrew Carter, Vicky Howard and myself, shared some of our favourite artworks and discussed why these were important to us. Andrew, Vicky and myself are all part of the artists’ and craftspersons’ group and Andrew has also led on the art project that we are began today.
Our hope was to explore areas such as:
John Reilly’s “ambition has always been to paint a picture which perfectly weds form and content” in order “to express in visible form the oneness and unity of [the] invisible power binding all things into one whole.” I was fortunate enough to meet him at his home on the Isle of Wight, while there on a family holiday. I didn’t know of his work before going on that holiday but found cards and prints of his amazing work in some of the shops there and had to find out more. He was kind enough to invite me into his home and show me his work and works in progress.
He has said: "My paintings are not concerned with the surface appearance of people or things but try to express something of the fundamental spiritual reality behind this surface appearance. I try to express in visible form the oneness and unity of this invisible power, binding all things into one whole. I try to express something of the universal and timeless truths behind the stories of the Bible.”
So, for Reilly, the unseen reality manifests itself both through pattern - “the oneness and unity of this invisible power, binding all things into one whole” - and through story - “the universal and timeless truths behind the stories of the Bible”. He has also used the greater freedom of expression that modern movements in art have given to artists to develop a visual language of forms and colours which he hopes expresses “something of their deeper spiritual significance.” His work draws on cubism, fauvism and orphism in particular.
Reilly has made a profound use of the circle in his work in order to depict the wholeness that he finds in the world and the life that God has created. He frequently bases his works on a central circle (often, the sun) from which facets of colour emanate, like ripples on the surface of a stream. The painting’s imagery is then set within these facets, each figure or object being embedded in the overall patterning of the painting and related to the environmental whole that Reilly creates.
By these means fragments of form and colour (the facets of the painting’s patterning) and the images that they contain are united to circle harmoniously around and within God, the central life and intelligence which is the light of the world. Works such as ‘Life Eternal’ utilise these methods and meanings and both contain and convey huge energy and resolution as a result.
His technique of colour fragments emanating from a central source enables him to suggest that his archetypal images of creation and the landscape are both, filled with the emanating rays and linked by them into a unified circle. His paintings (including 'Life Eternal’) therefore suggest the way in which we are linked both by being the creation of God and by being indwelt by his spirit.
Sister Wendy Beckett compared aspects of twentieth century art to the Way of Affirmation in Western Christianity which approaches God through creatures and imagery. “In Christianity,” she says, “the divine is constantly in process of passing into the human”. This leads, she suggests, to “an unapologetic religious yes to sense-pleasure” shown in the way the painting of the last century is “no longer trying to create an illusion, or to have us looking away from itself … Heaven in a grain of sand; the Sacred in the immediacy of sensuous experience”. In her meditations on art she exemplifies this unapologetic religious yes to sense-pleasure and shares the work of artists that embody it in their work.
Artists like Norman Adams, who unites in his work many of the factors that we have briefly examined - a heightened experience of nature, bright passionate colour penetrating depths and crossing frontiers of understanding beyond ordinary experience, cultivation and order, and ideas drawn from deep down in the unconscious. Margaret Walters has noted how the religious subject matter of Norman Adams' paintings provide him with "a geometry, a structure of lines and circles that allows his complex colours, his masterly and distinctive use of watercolour, to work their magic". For Sister Wendy Beckett this ability of Adams' suggests that a mystical sense of oneness is making itself visible in his work.
- In poetry: with poet Malcolm Guite
- In prose: with writers Sam Wells and Douglas Board
- In art: with artists Jonathan Evens, Andrew Carter, and Vicky Howard
- In music: with Director of Music, Andrew Earis
For the Art Project participants are asked to construct a geometric star. All of the stars will vary in size and complexity adding to the overall mesmeric and spatial pattern. All the stars will form part of a large wall hanging based on Giotto’s fresco of stars on the ceiling of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. Stars are a symbol of truth, spirit and hope and are seen as something beautiful, good and positive. Stars can also be a symbol that embodies the notion of spiritual revelation in each of us. We hope that the finished piece will look beautiful and positive and a sign of hope for us all.
In the session on 'Using our Imagination in Art,’ Andrew Carter, Vicky Howard and myself, shared some of our favourite artworks and discussed why these were important to us. Andrew, Vicky and myself are all part of the artists’ and craftspersons’ group and Andrew has also led on the art project that we are began today.
Our hope was to explore areas such as:
- what it is that we are primarily responding to in those artworks;
- the ways they work visually;
- how ideas and emotions are explored visually;
- how a sense of the spiritual might have been engendered; and
- how the imagination of God appears in human creations.
John Reilly’s “ambition has always been to paint a picture which perfectly weds form and content” in order “to express in visible form the oneness and unity of [the] invisible power binding all things into one whole.” I was fortunate enough to meet him at his home on the Isle of Wight, while there on a family holiday. I didn’t know of his work before going on that holiday but found cards and prints of his amazing work in some of the shops there and had to find out more. He was kind enough to invite me into his home and show me his work and works in progress.
He has said: "My paintings are not concerned with the surface appearance of people or things but try to express something of the fundamental spiritual reality behind this surface appearance. I try to express in visible form the oneness and unity of this invisible power, binding all things into one whole. I try to express something of the universal and timeless truths behind the stories of the Bible.”
So, for Reilly, the unseen reality manifests itself both through pattern - “the oneness and unity of this invisible power, binding all things into one whole” - and through story - “the universal and timeless truths behind the stories of the Bible”. He has also used the greater freedom of expression that modern movements in art have given to artists to develop a visual language of forms and colours which he hopes expresses “something of their deeper spiritual significance.” His work draws on cubism, fauvism and orphism in particular.
Reilly has made a profound use of the circle in his work in order to depict the wholeness that he finds in the world and the life that God has created. He frequently bases his works on a central circle (often, the sun) from which facets of colour emanate, like ripples on the surface of a stream. The painting’s imagery is then set within these facets, each figure or object being embedded in the overall patterning of the painting and related to the environmental whole that Reilly creates.
By these means fragments of form and colour (the facets of the painting’s patterning) and the images that they contain are united to circle harmoniously around and within God, the central life and intelligence which is the light of the world. Works such as ‘Life Eternal’ utilise these methods and meanings and both contain and convey huge energy and resolution as a result.
His technique of colour fragments emanating from a central source enables him to suggest that his archetypal images of creation and the landscape are both, filled with the emanating rays and linked by them into a unified circle. His paintings (including 'Life Eternal’) therefore suggest the way in which we are linked both by being the creation of God and by being indwelt by his spirit.
Sister Wendy Beckett compared aspects of twentieth century art to the Way of Affirmation in Western Christianity which approaches God through creatures and imagery. “In Christianity,” she says, “the divine is constantly in process of passing into the human”. This leads, she suggests, to “an unapologetic religious yes to sense-pleasure” shown in the way the painting of the last century is “no longer trying to create an illusion, or to have us looking away from itself … Heaven in a grain of sand; the Sacred in the immediacy of sensuous experience”. In her meditations on art she exemplifies this unapologetic religious yes to sense-pleasure and shares the work of artists that embody it in their work.
Artists like Norman Adams, who unites in his work many of the factors that we have briefly examined - a heightened experience of nature, bright passionate colour penetrating depths and crossing frontiers of understanding beyond ordinary experience, cultivation and order, and ideas drawn from deep down in the unconscious. Margaret Walters has noted how the religious subject matter of Norman Adams' paintings provide him with "a geometry, a structure of lines and circles that allows his complex colours, his masterly and distinctive use of watercolour, to work their magic". For Sister Wendy Beckett this ability of Adams' suggests that a mystical sense of oneness is making itself visible in his work.
My favourite works of art, therefore, are those that are incarnational - in that they unite heaven and earth, the human and divine - and which also show us the Way of Affirmation.
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Etta Cameron - I Have A Dream.
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