Church Times - Glyn Philpot: Flesh and Spirit

My latest piece for Church Times is about 'Glyn Philpot: Flesh and Spirit' at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester:

'... what we see in Balthasar, where Philpot eschews the other Magi to “focus entirely on the African king who brings myrrh to the child Jesus”. “With his head held aloft, he is depicted as empowered, noble and dignified.” He looks not at us, but to the Holy Family, placing us in a privileged position, as if witnessing Balthasar’s arrival among the Holy Family. Philpot paints in this way and with this sensibility because, [Simon] Martin says, “As a queer man, Philpot was a social outsider himself, and so it is tempting to believe that he identified with an outsider of a different sort.”'

My Artlyst piece comparing and contrasting the differences and similarities between Glyn Philpot and Walter Sickert in the light of the overlap in the careers of both artists and the Pallant House Gallery exhibition plus the first major retrospective of Walter Sickert at Tate in over 60 years, is here.

Other of my pieces for Church Times can be found here. My writing for ArtWay can be found here. My pieces for Artlyst are here and those for Art+Christianity are here. See also Modern religious art: airbrushed from art history?

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Faith, Folk and Anarchy.