Foyer display: Rosalind Beeton

 

St Martin-in-the-Fields is home to several commissions and permanent installations by contemporary artists. We also have an exciting programme of temporary exhibitions, as well as a group of artists and craftspeople from the St Martin’s community who show artwork and organise art projects on a temporary basis.

One of the initiatives from this group is a changing display of work by the group members. Each month a different member of the group will show an example of their work, so, if you are able, do return to see the changing display.

This month we are showing landscapes from China, Suffolk and Wales in watercolour or oil by Rosalind Beeton. Rosalind writes of how she finds music in nature, the trees, the birds, the hills, the cosmos. She says: ‘I studied music for my B.Ed degree, learning about classical harmonic structures and how to compose pieces. I also spent many years training in art. I have played the piano since I was 7 and have played various instruments over the years but my great love has always been the cello, the music of which touches my heart deeply, so I am attempting to learn this beautiful instrument. Now I am also enjoying words in poetry that I write, enjoying the evocative musical sounds and colours that words can evoke and create. I feel privileged and happy to be a member of the Nazareth Contemplative Community here at St Martins-in-the-Fields.’

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Academy of St Martin in the Fields, St Martin's Voices, Andrew Earis - Hallelujah.

Lent exhibition: The city is my monastery

‘The city is my monastery’ is an exhibition created by the artists and craftsperson’s group at St Martin-in-the-Fields for Lent that will be on show in the Foyer of the Crypt from 26 February - 10 April.

St Martin-in-the-Fields is home to several commissions and permanent installations by contemporary artists. We also have an exciting programme of temporary exhibitions, as well as a group of artists and craftspeople from the St Martin’s community who show artwork and organise art projects on a temporary basis. One of the initiatives from this group is a changing display of work by the group members or artists linked to the group. Each month a different artist shows examples of their work, so, if you are able, do return to see the changing display.

For Lent 2020 the group have created an exhibition to accompany the Lent Course at St Martin-in-the-Fields – ‘The Desert in the City.’ Using Revd Richard Carter’s new book ‘The City is my Monastery: A contemporary rule of life’ as its inspiration, this exhibition focuses on how we might deepen our lives of contemplation and action at the heart of the city. Seeing a need for monastic values in the centre of the city, Richard founded the Nazareth Community. Its members gather from everyday life to seek God in contemplation, to replenish stressed lives, to acknowledge their dependence on God's grace and to learn to live generously.

Charles de Foucault once famously remarked that if we need to go to the desert to find God, then everyone trying hard to survive in a bustling city would need to have a little strip of desert with them. We need he said ‘to create the desert in the heart of the city… contemplation in the streets that is our task.’ How can we become more attentive to the continuous presence of God and create the space to bring our lives before God? Through this exhibition the artists and craftspeople at St Martin’s are seeking to explore our own spiritual paths: the places of encounter, forgiveness, nurture, compassion, generosity and growing depth, and the challenging discovery of the Word made flesh in one another.

The exhibition explores themes of: cities, monasteries, prayer, contemplation, community, silence, sacraments, study, sharing, service, steadfastness (staying with), and sabbath.

Lois Bentley's ‘Our Childhood’s Pattern’, an assemblage of torn printed roundels in primary colour, with graphite drawing on layers of deserted paper, red velvet ribbon, began by playing with the seven S’s of invitation in Richard Carter’s book:

Letting the letters weave around each other, until
they settled into pattern and circle
from a mug of tea, into
three fresh ink prints,
layered on the detritus
and reward of this city life.

Rosalind Beeton's 'Landscape' is also accompanied by a poem:

Walk softly, walk gently into the new,
oh hallowed beginnings…
may a fresh spring flourish in your heart
and new buds flower in your being
with His healing presence to breathe you…

your compassion and love will warm the world
your sacred footsteps tread All Hallows holy ground…
walk softly and silently into His grace and peace…

Alice Bree's ‘The Golden Thread of Silence’ is similarly accompanied:

gold is precious,
silence is precious
we wait on God in silence and stillness,
listening in each moment as we pray. 

Nicola Ravenscroft's 'to dance the canticle' comes with the following lyric:

she sang the Magnificat for me
on the day her child was due,
and i asked her to rejoice, and swing
the tilt and lean of womanhood ..
and with arms stretched wide
and loving as a crucifix,
she danced the canticle
and cried with me ..

i held her in my hands with her unborn son
in clay ..
and together,
we gave thanks

Sheila Walcott Chambers writes that 'in experiencing ‘the city as my monastery’ I sought to consider the lived experience of this woman (‘Louise in Our Midst’) who begged at the foot of the steps up into Waterloo Station. While at service in St Martin’s, I honoured that homeless young woman by placing her inside the iconic ovoid cross both literally and metaphorically. Then I drew her image as if she was suffused with importance.'

Asanka Lekamalage reminds us through ‘Paradise in the City’ that, 'even in London, there are parks and woodlands where you can walk in silence, yet hear the sound of birds singing.' 'It reminds me, he writes, 'of my childhood in Sri Lanka.' 'To put these memories in a painting is another way of finding sacred space in silence, and sharing it with others.'

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Philip Bailey - The Wonders Of His Love.

Foyer display – Rosalind Beeton

St Martin-in-the-Fields is home to several commissions and permanent installations by contemporary artists. We also have an exciting programme of temporary exhibitions, as well as a group of artists and craftspeople from the St Martin’s community who show artwork and organise art projects on a temporary basis. One of the initiatives from this group is a changing display of work by the group members or artists linked to the group. Each month a different artist shows examples of their work, so, if you are able, do return to see the changing display.

For February, the display is ‘Music In Landscape,’ a series of mixed media paintings by Rosalind Beeton.

Rosalind writes: 

‘Being a musician and painter I have always been interested in synaesthesia, being able to see sound and hear colour. In these paintings I have tried to show how notes, music, cannot be trapped in a formal music stave as printed music is written. Music is free, it belongs to another dimension outside time or space, there are no boundaries only man-made use of bar-lines, a stave and time signature. In these paintings I have tried to show how these sounds, for me, can be related to the rhythms of landscape, how I find music in nature, the trees, the birds, the hills, the cosmos. For me, the act of painting is a very sensual activity. All these paintings are composed of mixed media, collage, graphite, oil and water colour.

I studied music for my B.Ed degree, learning about classical harmonic structures and how to compose pieces. I also spent many years training in art. I have played the piano since I was 7, and have played various instruments over the years but my great love has always been the cello, the music of which touches my heart deeply, so I am attempting to learn this beautiful instrument. Now I am also enjoying words in poetry that I write, enjoying the evocative musical sounds and colours that words can evoke and create. I feel privileged and happy to be a member of the Nazareth Contemplative Community here at St Martins-in-the-Fields.’

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Don McLean - Vincent (Starry, Starry Night).

New monthly Foyer display at St Martin-in-the-Fields

The latest initiative from the artists and craftspeoples group at St Martin-in-the-Fields is a changing display of work by the group members in the Foyer of the Crypt. Each month a different member of the group will show an example of their work, so do look regularly to see the changing display. 

In June we are showing Rosalind Beeton's Pentecostal painting entitled 'The Holy Spirit blessing'. 

The artists and craftspeoples group plan artistic contributions on the site, as part of our common life at St Martin’s.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Peter Hurford - Litany To The Holy Spirit.

Hidden St Martin's

Artists and craftspeople from the congregation at St Martin-in-the-Fields speak about their 'Hidden St Martin's' exhibition for the 2016 Patronal Festival. The exhibition reflects on the theme from a variety of different perspectives using ceramics, drawings, films, paintings, photographs, text and textiles. The exhibition ends on Sunday 27 November 2016.
We have been inspired by:

• St Martin, who noticed the destitute man at the gate of the city of Amiens.
• Jesus suggests that giving and praying can be done in secret away from the public gaze (Matt 6). Many of the images of the kingdom use seemingly insignificant and often unnoticed things such as a mustard seed (Mark 4) and yeast (Luke 13) and yet both eventually have dramatic effects. 
• The Celtic idea of a thin place, a place where the veil between heaven and earth is thin so what is hidden becomes seen.
• Artists “notice things that other people don’t notice.” (Grayson Perry)

Ali Lyon reclaims hidden aspects of St Martin's recent past with a lectern fall and a photograph of an altar cloth from the period during the Renewal Project when St Martin's was 'on tour'. The fall uses material left after the ‘living stones’ which cover the altar cloth have been cut from the cloth. The fall gathers up the leftovers that would have been thrown away. In God's economy nothing is too hidden or insignificant to find its place and to be of use.

Photographs of St Martin's taken by Jonathan Evens hint at a hidden beyond, by using an object in the foreground to frame a background image. Black and white matt bowls by Alice Bree highlight overlooked or under-appreciated objects through their depiction of stones from a Cornish beach. Vicky Howard’s drawings in lined notebooks or on pamphlets derive from a similar impetus. Vicky uses the lines or text as a guide to the patterns that she makes. Through the organic, shifting, ever-changing structures of her drawings she is searching for the form of the shelter in which God will hide us (Psalm 27).

Jon Sandford depicts the divine or heavenly as being hidden at St Martin's in the form of our East Window. The message of Jon's image is hidden in its symbolism, waiting to be decoded. Brian Mears’ explores the invisible qualities of eternal power and divine nature in his painting entitled ‘The Fourth Day’. In Rosalind Beeton’s paintings light, as flecks and dashes of colour, veils the subjects and objects bathing all in divine light. The veil that once hid the divine has been removed and all that was once independent and distinct is now embraced by divinity. Her poetry also explores mystery as in 'The Gatherer', written this year on Patmos, the island of revelation.

St Martin’s has an ongoing ministry of supporting homeless and vulnerably housed peopleacross the UK. Zi Ling’s painting ‘Hope’ from her homelessness series brings to our view people who are often overlooked on our streets. Lightspirit has contributed a poem from the streets, while the ‘Palm Tree’ painted by Rosida Simrick is a reminder of the hidden home that she can no longer see. Our inspiration for this ministry with those who are homeless is the story of St Martin. Jonathan Evens’ collage with a torn meditation on St Martin is a visual reminder of the cloak which St Martin tore to give half to the man at the gate of Amiens.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Van Morrison - The Beauty Of Days Gone By.

Hidden St Martin's

This exhibition for the Patronal Festival of St Martin-in-the-Fields by artists and craftspeople from the congregation reflects on the theme of 'Hidden St Martins' from a variety of different perspectives using ceramics, drawings, film, paintings, photographs, text and textiles.

We have been inspired by:

• St Martin, who noticed the destitute man at the gate of the city of Amiens.
• Jesus suggests that giving and praying can be done in secret away from the public gaze (Matt 6). Many of the images of the kingdom use seemingly insignificant and often unnoticed things such as a mustard seed (Mark 4) and yeast (Luke 13) and yet both eventually have dramatic effects. 
• The Celtic idea of a thin place, a place where the veil between heaven and earth is thin so what is hidden becomes seen.
• Artists “notice things that other people don’t notice.” (Grayson Perry)

In his 360• film, Jonathan Kearney enables us to explore parts of the Church which are usually hidden from view. His other film reveals the beauty of small details which we normally overlook in our busyness or inattention to our surroundings. Photographs of St Martin's taken by Jonathan Evens hint at a hidden beyond, by using an object in the foreground to frame a background image. Black and white matt bowls by Alice Bree highlight overlooked or under-appreciated objects through their depiction of stones from a Cornish beach.

Ali Lyon reclaims hidden aspects of St Martin's recent past with a lectern fall and a photograph of an altar cloth from the period during the Renewal Project when St Martin's was 'on tour'. The fall uses material left after the ‘living stones’ which cover the altar cloth have been cut from the cloth. The fall gathers up the leftovers that would have been thrown away. In God's economy nothing is too hidden or insignificant to find its place and to be of use. Vicky Howard’s drawings in lined notebooks or on pamphlets derive from a similar impetus. Vicky uses the lines or text as a guide to the patterns that she makes. Through the organic, shifting, ever-changing structures of her drawings she is searching for the form of the shelter in which God will hide us (Psalm 27).

Jon Sandford depicts the divine or heavenly as being hidden at St Martin's in the form of our East Window. The message of Jon's image is hidden in its symbolism, waiting to be decoded. Brian Mears’ explores the invisible qualities of eternal power and divine nature in his painting entitled ‘The Fourth Day’. In Rosalind Beeton’s paintings light, as flecks and dashes of colour, veils the subjects and objects bathing all in divine light. The veil that once hid the divine has been removed and all that was once independent and distinct is now embraced by divinity. Her poetry also explores mystery as in 'The Gatherer', written this year on Patmos, the island of revelation.

St Martin’s has an ongoing ministry of supporting homeless and vulnerably housed people across the UK. Zi Ling’s painting ‘Hope’ from her homelessness series brings to our view people who are often overlooked on our streets. Lightspirit has contributed a poem from the streets, while the ‘Palm Tree’ painted by Rosida Simrick is a reminder of the hidden home that she can no longer see. Our inspiration for this ministry with those who are homeless is the story of St Martin. Jonathan Evens’ collage with a torn meditation on St Martin is a visual reminder of the cloak which St Martin tore to give half to the man at the gate of Amiens.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Leonard Cohen - Travelling Light.