'The murals are, like those of Stanley Spencer in the Sandham Memorial Chapel at Burghclere, ‘a unique example of war art’: ‘They record the landscape, the people, and the way of life that was under threat. Christ in Glory depicting, amongst the three servicemen shown, Douglas Hemming who was killed at Caen, takes on a war memorial role. Their religious content reflects the belief of their patron that Christianity was the central pillar of a European civilization that was under threat from the despotic forces of evil.’ As with Spencer’s murals, the artist’s love for and use of ‘local people and the local landscape showed how the divine was a part of the everyday’ enabling them to ‘sense the closeness of God to their own lives.’ As Bell put it in his dedication sermon: ‘The pictures will bring home to you the real truth of the Bible story ...help the pages of the New Testament to speak to you - not as sacred personages living in a far-off land and time, but as human beings ...with the same kind of human troubles, and faults, and goodness, and dangers, that we know in Sussex today.’
My Church of the Month reports include: Aylesford Priory, Canterbury Cathedral, Chapel of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, Hem, Chelmsford Cathedral, Churches in Little Walsingham, Coventry Cathedral, Église de Saint-Paul à Grange-Canal, Eton College Chapel, Lumen, Metz Cathedral, Notre Dame du Léman, Notre-Dame de Toute Grâce, Plateau d’Assy,Romont, Sint Martinuskerk Latem, St Aidan of Lindisfarne, St Alban Romford, St. Andrew Bobola Polish RC Church, St. Margaret’s Church, Ditchling, and Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft, St Mary the Virgin, Downe, and St Paul Goodmayes, as well as earlier reports of visits to sites associated with Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, Marc Chagall, Jean Cocteau, Antoni Gaudi and Henri Matisse.
My visual meditations include work by María Inés Aguirre, Giampaolo Babetto, Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, Alexander de Cadenet, Christopher Clack, Marlene Dumas, Terry Ffyffe, Antoni Gaudi, Nicola Green, Maciej Hoffman, S. Billie Mandle, Giacomo Manzù, Michael Pendry, Maurice Novarina, Regan O'Callaghan, Ana Maria Pacheco, John Piper, Albert Servaes, Henry Shelton and Anna Sikorska.
Interviews for ArtWay include: Sophie Hacker and Peter Koenig. I also interviewed ArtWay founder Marleen Hengelaar Rookmaaker for Artlyst.
I have reviewed: Art and the Church: A Fractious Embrace, Kempe: The Life, Art and Legacy of Charles Eamer Kempe, and Jazz, Blues, and Spirituals.
Other of my writings for ArtWay can be found here. My pieces for Church Times can be found here. Those for Artlyst are here and those for Art+Christianity are here.
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The Neal Morse Band - A Love That Never Dies.
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