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Showing posts with label artlyst. Show all posts
Showing posts with label artlyst. Show all posts

Thursday, 5 November 2026

Artlyst: The Art Diary November 2026

Here's my November Art Diary for Artlyst:

'In ‘Women, Art, God’, art historian and priest Ayla Lepine invites us to explore the relationship between faith and imagination. Across centuries, cultures, materials and subjects, women’s stories and works of art provide wisdom about the power of images. In this book, which I am currently reviewing, Lepine, through vibrant conversations about art, life and faith, enables us to glimpse God in the visions of artists including Frida Kahlo, Artemisia Gentileschi and Sonia Boyce. Women’s art and spirituality guide readers across centuries and continents, encouraging us to take religion’s importance in visual culture and creativity seriously. Women, Art, God provides a bold and fresh approach to feminist theology and art history.

For the November diary, I begin by staying with the question that Lepine explores in her book: How can art by women transform our experiences of spirituality and religion? Highlighted exhibitions include works by Edmonia Lewis, Ethelwynne M. Quail, Emma Kunz, Gabrielle Goliath, Cecilia Vicuña, and Yu Hong. This is followed by commissions and exhibitions involving Graeme Mortimer Evelyn, Maurice Denis, Stanley Spencer, Gary Bunt, Charlie Mackesy, and Mark Dunford. We then move through the centuries with exhibitions moving from Constantinople to the Renaissance and the Dutch Golden Age. I end with a series of relational group shows for European Cultural Centre Italy, Focal Point Gallery, NIKA Projects, The Minories, and Foundling Museum.'

My other pieces for Artlyst are:

Interviews -
Monthly diary articles -
Articles/Reviews -

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Michael Kiwanuka - Summer Clothes.
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Wednesday, 28 October 2026

Interview Update

Since my last Interview Update, I have had an interview published by ArtWay with Nicola Ravenscroft and an interview for Artlyst with Sean Scully and Hughie O'Donoghue.

My interview with Nicola focuses on her bronze sculpture at the Royal Free Hospital which stands as a lasting tribute to the courage, compassion, and dedication of NHS staff. In my joint interview with Sean and Hughie, they reflect on the nature of friendship while discussing aspects of their Irish identity, their experiences working during a hostile period for painting, the subsequent triumph of painting, and their experiences creating works for sacred spaces.'

For more on Nicola, click here for my Artlyst interview with Nicola, and here for an ArtWay Visual Meditation on her work. Click here for a poem published by Stride Magazine that was inspired by Nicola's series of 'in the language of angels' images. I have also written short stories about Nicola's mudcub sculptures (now called EarthAngels), which we exhibited at St Andrew's Wickford. The first story in the series is 'The Mudcubs and the O Zone holes.' The second is 'The Mudcubs and the Clean-Up King'. The third is 'The mudcubs and the Wall'.

See also my other pieces on Sean Scully, here, here and here.

As a result of these interviews, I am updating this index of interviews. I have carried out a large number of other interviews for Artlyst, ArtWay, Church Times, International Times, Seen and Unseen, The Big Picture and Art+Christianity. They provide a wide range of fascinating insights into the approaches and practices of artists, arts professionals, clerics, curators, performers, poets and writers.

They can be found at:

Artlyst
ArtWay
Church Times
International Times
Seen and Unseen
Art+Christianity
The Big Picture
Also see my interviews with artist Henry Shelton here and here and David Hawkins, former Bishop of Barking, here, here and here. I have also published an interview with artist, poet and writer Rupert Loydell, who has also interviewed Nick Battle and Steve Scott.

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De'Borah Powell & The Benefactors - Open My Eyes.
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Tuesday, 27 October 2026

Artlyst: Sean Scully And Hughie O’Donoghue - The Big Interview

My latest interview for Artlyst is with Sean Scully and Hughie O'Donoghue:

'Sean Scully, who was recently named an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, one of France’s highest cultural honours, was born in Dublin, moved to London in 1949 and settled in America in the mid-1970s. He is best known as a painter of monumental works in oil, although he is also a printmaker, producing woodcuts and etchings. Hughie O’Donoghue was born in Manchester, England, in 1953 and now lives and works in London and Erris, Co Mayo, Ireland. He uses figuration and abstraction to explore themes of human identity, memory, and experience, and draws on history, mythology, and personal records to create works that resonate with emotional intensity.

Initially admirers of each other’s work, the two artists have subsequently become good friends. In this joint interview, they reflect on the nature of friendship while discussing aspects of their Irish identity, their experiences working during a hostile period for painting, the subsequent triumph of painting, and their experiences creating works for sacred spaces.'

See also my other pieces on Sean Scully, here, here and here.

My other pieces for Artlyst are:

Interviews -
Monthly diary articles -
Articles/Reviews -
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Friday, 16 October 2026

St John's Waterloo - ‘Anthony Lawrence: A Practical Guide To Aesthetics‘



















Last night I had an advance view of ‘Anthony Lawrence: A Practical Guide To Aesthetics‘, an exhibition of the work of post-modern artist Anthony Lawrence at St John’s, Waterloo. See my Artlyst Art Diary for October for more on the exhibition and my review of last year's retrospective for more on Anthony Lawrence.   

Coinciding with Frieze week, the exhibition shows some of Lawrence’s major works from his series of grand themes, such as Dante, Tannhäuser, and the Damned Demoiselles, as well as portraits and several of his religious and spiritual paintings. Lawrence worked intensively over five decades, creating a vast collection of work that is now being made public.

‘A Practical Guide to Aesthetics’ follows a critically acclaimed 2025 retrospective at Nick and Caroline de Rothschild’s Palais des Vaches Gallery in the New Forest, which was the first to show the full spectrum of Lawrence’s career. Forbes described the work as blending “classical technique, pop-cultural wit, and poetic imagination. Playful portraits, surreal landscapes and painterly still lifes bring overdue recognition to a hidden genius of British art”. Many of the works in that show had not been seen before then; this exhibition at St John’s will bring to light several more of Lawrence’s paintings, including some from the newly restored ‘A Practical Guide to Aesthetics’ series from the early 1990s.

Lawrence worked throughout his life on portrait commissions; his works included sitters such as John Wayne, Yehudi Menuhin, Ian McKellen, and Rt Rev Hassan Dehqani-Tafti, among others. Included in this show are Lawrence’s paintings of Francis Bacon and Seamus Heaney, with whom he became friends.

Fascinated by religion, Lawrence spoke of the “constant fight between the sacred and the secular” and made many works relating to religion and spirituality. His own ‘The Stations of the Cross’ was inspired by the restoration of the display of religious imagery in the Byzantine Empire; these colourful and dramatic paintings show his commitment to technique, stressing the importance of post-modern framing. In my review of the 2025 retrospective for The Church Times, I said, “While constantly evolving through styles and series as a great ‘knowing’ Post-Modernist, Lawrence sought, through his blend of tradition and invention, history and innovation, to hint at how reconciliation might be found in the great contest of social humanity.”

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