Between: drawing

Showing posts with label drawing. Show all posts

Tuesday, 17 March 2026

Artlyst: Bruegel To Rembrandt Drawing The Rise of Naturalism Compton Verney

My latest exhibition review for Artlyst is on ‘Bruegel to Rembrandt: Drawing Life, Sketching Wonder’ at Compton Verney:

'‘Patience’ shows naturalistic drawing utilised in the service of fantastical moral fables, while ‘Prudence’ shows the same style utilised in the service of realist moral fables. This shift from a focus on a fantastical demonic scene to a realistic rural scene in which, ‘as now, people look for a sense of control in times of uncertainty – preparing for harder days, these peasants store food and money, repair dilapidated buildings, and gather firefighting equipment’ – is part artistic, part social and part theological.

Religion plays a significant role throughout the changes explored and the genres displayed. An exquisitely illustrated 16th-century Flemish Book of Hours illuminates the relationship between prayer books and the depiction of everyday country life across the Netherlands in this period. However, a secularising element can also be seen, particularly when the Biblical content is minimised within an image to focus on the landscape in which the scene is set. An example of this tendency can be seen in Abraham Bloemaert’s ‘Landscape with the Prodigal Son’, where Bloemaert’s interest is mainly with the dilapidated house or barn against which the miniscule Prodigal leans and the living trees that the barn is built around.'

My other pieces for Artlyst are:

Interviews -

Monthly diary articles -

Articles/Reviews -

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De'Borah Powell - Open My Eyes.

Friday, 22 July 2022

ArtWay Visual Meditation: Invited to be with Jesus

My latest Visual Meditation for ArtWay is on 'The Blind Jesus (No one belongs here more than you)' by Alan Stewart:

'The Blind Jesus (No-one belongs here more than you) is an image in charcoal of the Last Supper which includes the central character of a visually impaired Jesus, surrounded by twelve people of differing ages, backgrounds and abilities. At the table, an empty chair invites the viewer to find themselves at the table.

This image has been commissioned by Celia Webster, Co-Founder of Wave (We’re All Valued Equally), as part of a project in which it seeds other images of the Last Supper that are truly for everyone. Schools, churches and community groups are being invited as part of this project to create their own Last Supper images.'

For more on The Blind Jesus (No-one belongs here more than you) see here, here and here. My interview with textile artist Belinda Scarlett can also still be read on the ArtWay site.

My visual meditations include work by María Inés Aguirre, Giampaolo Babetto, Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, Alexander de Cadenet, Christopher Clack, Marlene Dumas, Terry Ffyffe, Jake Flood, Antoni Gaudi, Nicola Green, Maciej Hoffman, Lakwena Maciver, S. Billie Mandle, Giacomo Manzù, Sidney Nolan, Michael Pendry, Maurice Novarina, Regan O'Callaghan, Ana Maria Pacheco, John Piper, Nicola Ravenscroft, Albert Servaes, Henry Sh elton, Anna Sikorska, Jan Toorop, Edmund de Waal and Sane Wadu.

My Church of the Month reports include: All Saints Parish Church, Tudeley, Aylesford Priory, Canterbury Cathedral, Chapel of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, Hem, Chelmsford Cathedral, Churches in Little Walsi ngham, 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,R omont, 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, St Michael and All Angels Berwick and St Pa ul Goodmayes, as well as earlier reports of visits to sites associated with Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, Marc Chagall, Jean Cocteau, Antoni Gaudi and Hen r i Matisse.

Blogs for ArtWay include: Congruity and controversy: exploring issues for contemporary commissions;
Photographing Religious Practice; Spirituality and/in Modern Art; and The Spirituality of the Artist-Clown.

Interviews for ArtWay include: Sophie Hacker, Peter Koenig and Belinda Scarlett. 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. See also Modern religious art: airbrushed from art history?

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Simon and Garfunkel - Bridge Over Troubled Water.

Friday, 1 July 2022

The Blind Jesus (No-one belongs here more than you)

Church Times recently ran a photo story on The Blind Jesus (No-one belongs here more than you), an image in charcoal of the Last Supper which includes the central character of a visually impaired Jesus, surrounded by twelve people of differing ages, backgrounds and abilities. At the table, an empty chair invites the viewer to find themselves at the table. See here for the Church Times story.

This image has been commissioned by Celia Webster, Co-Founder of Wave (We’re All Valued Equally), as part of a project in which it seeds other images of the Last Supper that are truly for everyone and is displayed by churches alongside selections of these additional images. Schools, churches and community groups are being invited as part of this project to create their own Last Supper images.

Rev Alan Stewart is currently the vicar of two churches in Hertford. He studied Foundation Art at Belfast Art College, then graduated with a degree in Fashion and Textiles from Central St Martins in London. From an early age, he’s drawn and painted. He has exhibited in various churches and galleries. He works in charcoal, pastel and collage.

Wave for Change is about encouraging and enabling mixed-ability friendships. Wave want to see more people with and without learning disabilities mixing and having fun together in the heart of our communities. Their focus is on enabling places across the UK where this can happen. They connect, encourage and support those who want to see vibrant mixed-ability social and worship groups in their communities. https://www.wave-for-change.org.uk/

Those who wish to find out more about this project can contact Celia Webster at cebwebster@gmail.com.

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Carleen Anderson - Begin Again.

Wednesday, 24 November 2021

Foyer Display: Drawings from the Drawing Club

It’s a warm welcome back this week to the Foyer Display organised by the artists and craftsperson’s group at St Martin-in-the-Fields. The group is made up 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 drawings made by members of our Drawing Club. Each month for two hours the Drawing Club meets to draw together. The aim of the group is to encourage and practice together. Materials, objects to draw and step-by-step help for those who would like it are all provided. No previous experience is necessary, and all are welcome. The group is organised and led by Vicky Howard. For the most recent session, from which these drawings come, Vicky spoke about the late work of John Constable as an approach to drawing and provided gourds and shells from which to work.

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Sixpence None the Richer - Sooner Than Later.

Sunday, 21 April 2019

Leaves for Healing: The Flowering of the Crown of Thorns

Crown of Thorns (after Lee-Elliott), pastels on paper with bamboo support

Flowering of the Crown of Thorns (after Lee-Elliott), pastels on paper with bamboo support

Original version of The Flowering of the Crown of Thorns as shown at a commission4mission exhibition in St Stephen Walbrook

Leaves for Healing is a two-part exhibition organised by the artist’s and craftspersons’ group at St Martin-in-the-Fields. The theme is taken from Ezekiel 47:1-12 and the two halves of the exhibition reflect the transition from wilderness to fertile land. Several pieces have been shown in one form in the Lenten part of the exhibition and then adapted or further developed for the Eastertide part of the exhibition.

My contribution to the exhibition is one which has been altered in line with the different sections of the exhibition. My image is inspired by Theyre Lee-Elliott's Crucified tree form - the agony, a painting which is part of the Methodist Modern Art Collection. Lee-Elliott is a neglected artist who created notable Art Deco logos and painted the ballet and religious art. See here for Lee-Elliott's image.

The Lenten version of the piece was a drawing after Lee-Elliott's crucified tree form with an emphasis on thorns around the head section of the tree form. Now for the Eastertide version of the piece, I have added leaves and flowers to create the flowering of the crown of thorns, as an image of the instrument of torture becoming the means of grace. The flowers used, although indicative, are Viola tricolor, also known as heart's ease; which seemed appropriate. This is the second version I have created on the flowering of the crown of thorns. The earlier version is shown above from a commission4mission exhibition at St Stephen Walbrook.

Several other pieces in the exhibition have been developed or altered to reflect the different themes and emotions in the two halves of the exhibition overall. These include Three Hanging by Lois Bentley in which her photographic collages on sheet steel, originally hung with ‘Bruised’ taking centre stage, flanked by ‘Cubits’ and Granite’, have now been re-ordered for Eastertide. Now titled Re-United, for Eastertide the middle triangle is placed point upwards as Jesus work on the cross is finished and the Trinity are restored to their coherent whole. The colour yellow appears as the Spring of resurrection dawns. The new piece has been inspired by Jesus asking Simon for a third time - do you love me? Similarly with Ali Lyon's Down in the River to Pray, Hand-dyed fabric (linen, silk, cotton) in deepening shades of blue, with some salt embellishment. This follows the image of deepening water, the trees on the banks, the salty water, and shores of plain green. The shores were unadorned for Lent and now, for Eastertide, are blossoming with a variety of hand-stitched leaves (dyed and variously constructed).

Leaves for Healing can be viewed in the foyer at St Martin-in-the-Fields until 9 June 2019.

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Beth Gibbons / Penderecki / Górecki - Symphony No. 3 Final Movement.

Sunday, 24 March 2019

Traces of the unseen and the transient

On sunny days, while waiting for the train Peter S. Smith draws his shadow as it extends across the station. He constructs these drawings by sketching the outline in a couple of minutes while waiting for the train before adding the tone over the course of the journey. This daily drawing practice keeps him 'visually fit' while also providing inspiration for engravings and, more recently, paintings.

As Simon Brett has written Smith 'has always been one of the few artists to use wood engraving for a truly personal and genuinely contemporary vision, untrammelled by even the best conventions of the medium.' The paintings, drawings and prints that he recently showed at One Paved Court displayed playful and profound engagements with these shadow effects in work that combined abstract patterning, figurative representation of shadows and platform furniture with traces of the unseen and the transient.

The exhibition reflected Peter's his interest in normal everyday experiences and the ways that these can be transformed by the materials, processes and metaphors of a shared visual language.

Peter S Smith is a Painter/Printmaker with a studio at the St Bride Foundation in London. He studied Fine Art at Birmingham Polytechnic and Art Education at Manchester. In 1992 he gained an MA (Printmaking) at Wimbledon School of Art. Examples of his work can be found in private and public collections including Tate Britain and the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. His book 'The Way See It' (Piquant Press) is a visual monograph of contemporary work by a professional artist who is a Christian, which provides an illustrated introduction to the art of engraving. Simon Brett explains that Peter was: 'among a group of like-minded young artists who sat at the feet of the Dutch Calvinist art historian Hans Rookmaaker. Rookmaaker (1922-77), himself part of Francis Schaeffer's evangelical L'Abri movement, brought a deep understanding of contemporary art to bear on what a Christian might do in what then seemed like cultural end-times.'

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers and a Member of the Society of Wood Engravers. His work is held in many private and public collections including, Tate Britain; The Ashmolean, Oxford; The Fitzwilliam, Cambridge; The Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam and The Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Canada.

Simon Brett, in reviewing ‘The Way I See It’, said: 'Peter’s wood engravings and etchings are so much expressions of the identical sensibility, rather than exercises in contrasted media, that they subliminally make one think of him not as a wood engraver or an etcher as such, at all, but as a printmaker and an artist. Not all wood engravers achieve that, let alone effortlessly. He has done his printmaking MA, he knows all about techniques but he never succumbs to the flash or relies on the technically accomplished. He keeps his work and us always on the edge.'

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Duke Special - Condition.

Friday, 2 March 2018

Lent Oasis

Lent Oasis, Sunday 18 March, 2.00-4.00pm, George Richards & Austen Williams Rooms, St Martin-in-the-Fields

This ‘Oasis’ time will include quiet scripture reflection, prayer and practical art. Art materials will be available for you to explore, play with colour and be creative through collage, painting, drawing or writing. All are very welcome. Please let Helena Tarrant know if you wish to come – tel: 020 7766 1100 or email: helena.tarrant@smitf.org.

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The Brilliance - Yahweh.

Friday, 31 March 2017

Artistic responses to St Stephen Walbrook

Within our new website for St Stephen Walbrook we are collecting a series of artistic responses to this Wren masterpiece which is complemented by the modern art of Henry Moore and Patrick Heron. These can all be found in the Gallery section of the site.

Paul Raftery and Dan Lowe's time-lapse video of St Stephen Walbrook is filmed in black and white and is a meditative piece that explores the tranquil, domed space with its sculptural altar by Henry Moore. It was shot over three days using timelapse footage captured on DSLR cameras and incorporating motion control, with a bespoke soundtrack by George McLeod. The film received its premiere at Anise Gallery in an exhibition of photography and film based on themes found in the Sacred Geometries. The film encompasses the three aspects of Sacred Geometries seamlessly - mathematics, nature and spirituality.

Daniel Bourke is undertaking a digital residency with St Stephen Walbrook re-creating the building as a virtual environment. He has made an initial video as one of his initial imaginative responses to the space. His work can be viewed at http://danielbourke.com/.

Quintetta at St Stephen Walbrook Church is a drawing made by Trevor Mill while listening to the fantastic brass quintet during a magic lunchtime at St Stephen Walbrook.

In the context of our recent Crucifixions: Francis Bacon exhibition, Rupert Loydell read poetry inspired by the work of Francis Bacon and also by the annunciation. The experience inspired him to write a prose poem 'Faint Echoes' based on that event, which also included a lecture on 'The crucifixion in modern art'.

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Belle & Sebastian - I Want The World To Stop.

Thursday, 31 March 2016

The New Art Gallery Walsall & Jacob Epstein

The New Art Gallery Walsall is the home of the distinguished Garman Ryan Collection, which was donated to the Borough in 1972 by Lady Kathleen Epstein (née Garman).

"Two remarkable women created this collection: Kathleen Garman, lover and later wife of artist Jacob Epstein, and her life-long friend Sally Ryan, a talented sculptor." "Kathleen was originally from Wednesbury and, although had spent much of her life in London, wanted to give something back to the Black Country where she had grown up. She had formed this important collection with her close friend, Sally Ryan, granddaughter of an American tycoon and talented sculptor in her own right, following the death of Epstein in 1959." "Together, they formed an art collection that is intimate, adventurous and eclectic, reflecting their wide-ranging tastes."

They "collected 365 important works, including those by renowned artists such as Van Gogh, Monet, Constable, Picasso, Degas and Matisse, as well as by friends and family members, such as Epstein, Matthew Smith, Theo Garman and Lucian Freud, alongside artefacts from many cultures around the world. Works are displayed in the thematic groupings proscribed by Kathleen on her donation, which allows the opportunity to make unexpected links and comparisons across different cultures and centuries."

The Collection "consists of three hundred and sixty-five works of art, over a third of them being three-dimensional works from many different cultures and periods around the world. It also contains a wide-ranging body of the work of Sir Jacob Epstein and many significant works by European artists such as Van Gogh, Monet, Turner, Corot, Renoir and Constable represented in prints, sketches and drawings as well as paintings and sculptures." "The galleries chart the long, productive and often controversial career of Jacob Epstein, and serve as a memorial to the Epsteins extraordinary circle of family and friends - Augustus John, Modigliani, Gaudier-Brzeska and Epsteins one-time son-in-law Lucian Freud."

"Jacob Epstein grew up in the ghettos of New York; his parents emigrated there to escape the anti-Semitism and poverty of Poland. As a young man, Epstein delighted in his vibrant, multi-cultural surroundings. His creative talents were evident early on, but his father disapproved of his chosen profession. In 1901, Epstein received his first commission to illustrate Hutchins Hapgood's Spirit of the Ghetto. The money he earned enabled him to study in Paris. The excitement that Epstein felt is reflected in his self-portrait: staring defiantly at the viewer, he presents himself as unconventional and rebellious. His hair is unkempt and his shirt unbuttoned, he appears dynamic and oozing with confidence. After only a few years in Paris, he relocated to England. Mixing with artists and intellectuals, Epstein soon integrated himself into the London art scene. After a brief association with the Vorticists - during which time he created his monumental Rock Drill (1915) - he remained independent of any movements. He caused a great deal of controversy throughout his career - his Tomb for Oscar Wilde (1912) caused such an outcry that the French authorities tried to have it banned. He was fascinated by so-called 'primitive art' from Africa, Asia and Oceania and collected many art objects, some of which are on display in the gallery. He was also a skilled portraitist and many busts and sketches can also be seen in the Garman Ryan galleries. The Garman Ryan Collection is a visual guide to Epstein's life, career and artistic interests."

"Epstein was a man of intense feeling who did not hold back from injecting his passion into his religious works. Although ... much of Epstein's public had difficulty accepting the novelty of his work, some contemporaries did grasp the significant transformational potential of Epstein's art ... Epstein's original interpretations were recognized as bringing new life to a religious art that had become moribund."

Additionally, the Garman Ryan Epstein Collection "contains over 100 art works by artists closely related to the Garman Ryan Collection, in particular works by Sir Jacob Epstein, which have been purchased, bequeathed or donated to The New Art Gallery Walsall." Throughout 2016 the Gallery will display some of the newest acquisitions to its Permanent Collection, in the lead up to its 125th anniversary next year. Part 1 looks at People and Artistic Connections. It premieres two works by Frank Auerbach which were the Gallery's first acquisitions through HM Government's Accepted in Lieu Scheme, and belonged to his great friend, Lucian Freud. They are also showcasing The Garman Ryan Shroud by Birmingham based artist Sarah Taylor Silverwood, the resulting commission following her residency in their Studio in 2014.

The Garman Ryan Collection includes many parallels with works from Tate's extensive collections of British and European art and, as part of a three year partnership with Tate, 16 Tate artworks have been paired with related works in The Garman Ryan Collection, linked either by artist, subject or theme. Included are key examples of work by Eric Gill, Cedric Morris, John Nash, Picasso and Rodin.

The Gallery is also hosting "the prestigious John Ruskin Prize, which is now in its third year as an open exhibition inviting artists, both emerging and established from across the UK, to respond to the theme, Recording Britain Now: Society."

Its other current temporary exhibitions are:

Jan Vanriet: The Music Boy - Much of Vanriet's work "is rooted in his family history. His parents met in the Mauthausen concentration camp and their stories and memories of the Second World War and its aftermath continues to influence his paintings. Themes of love, loss, identity, destiny and disappearance pervade his work. Yet there is also an inherent playfulness and lightness of touch and an evident mastery of the medium of paint. The Music Boy is a polyptych of four paintings depicting his grandmother and uncle - his mother's twin brother - playing accordion as a boy before the war."

"Laura Lancaster is a painter who draws inspiration from forgotten and discarded photographs and home movies, found in flea markets, charity shops and through ebay. Once precious and significant to someone, they are now detached from their original contexts and instead, they become animated through Laura's luscious, gestural and expressive application of paint. These lost and dislocated souls, caught in the ambiguous space between figuration and abstraction, compel us to reflect on time, memory and loss."

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Mavis Staples - Tomorrow.

Thursday, 31 December 2015

Poem: ... if we attend ...

Supple sensuous sinuous pencil lines combine
with sketchy swathes, swatches
and blotches of liquid colour,
minimal modelling merging near and far,
present and past on shallow space.
Glass chalices, open windows,
flowers and thorns, still life and landscape.
The Eucharist - one reality in the form of another,
heaven in ordinary - frames and forms his making –
all human making - sacramental signification,
inutile and gratuitous; graceful, playful,
light and loving, abundant and affirming.

If we attend the waters are freed,
aqueous light floods static subjects
as fluid flecks, flurries and washes of colour
suffuse, invade, imbue and inform
playing freely on forms creating flux,
confusing boundaries, circling round
transparent images, blending, merging all -
the wood and the trees - bringing all within
imaginations reach. The spiritual shimmering,
shining through the material, the universal
in the particular - seeing with, not through
the eye - for to pay attention, this is prayer.

A Londoner of Protestant upbringing,
Catholic subscription, and of particular
Welsh and English stock.
A Christian modernist chasing connection
through heritage and lineage,
interlinking, interleaving past and present;
like iconographers writing images,
David Jones opened windows into the divine
in Harrow-on-the-Hill, Capel-y-ffin,
Pigotts, and Portslade.

David Jones: Vision & Memory is at Pallant House, Chichester, until 21 February 2016. A concurrent exhibition The Animals of David Jones is on show at Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft. ‘if we attend’ (2015), a white, wall-mounted vitrine with translucent glazing and 16 porcelain vessels, is a new piece by Edmund de Waal produced especially for the David Jones exhibition at Pallant House. It references the calming slowing down effect of these words in the second line of Jones’s poem The Anathemata: ‘We already and first of all discern him making this thing other. His groping syntax, if we attend, already shapes…’.

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David Jones - In Parenthesis.

Monday, 2 March 2015

commission4mission: Arts in Worship event

On Saturday 14th March commission4mission have organised an interactive event at St Stephen Walbrook exploring the use of visual arts in worship which will run from 1.00pm to 4.30pm.

The event will include:

art workshops in a variety of styles and media (including calligraphy, design enlargement, drawing on board, line techniques and pastels) led by Hayley Bowen, John Gentry, Mark Lewis, Henry Shelton and Peter Webb;
sessions showing and discussing use of visual multi-media meditations;
viewing of the annual exhibition by the National Society of Painters, Sculptors & Printmakers;
commission4mission and Oasis stalls;
a Special General meeting to discuss proposed revised Charitable Objects for commission4mission; and
a Service celebrating the Arts.

St Stephen Walbrook is a Wren church with a stone altar carved by Henry Moore and abstract kneelers designed by Patrick Heron. St Stephen Walbrook can be found at 39 Walbrook, London EC4N 8BN (from Bank tube station, take exit 8 and the church is a few yards ahead). The event is open to all.

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Colin Burns - I Wait For You.

Monday, 2 February 2015

Arts in Worship event

On Saturday 14th March commission4mission have a organised a fivefold event at St Stephen Walbrook which will run from 1.00pm to 4.30pm. The event will include:

art workshops in a variety of media;
sessions showing and discussing use of visual multi-media meditations;
viewing of the annual exhibition by the National Society of Painters, Sculptors & Printmakers;
a Special General meeting to discuss proposed revised Charitable Objects for commission4mission; and
a Service celebrating the Arts.

The event is open to all and will confirm and progress some of the new developments that were announced in our January newsletter.

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Krzyzstof Penderecki - St. Luke Passion.

Tuesday, 20 May 2014

Drawing the Line 2

"The real voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes but in seeing with new eyes" Marcel Proust

Drawing the Line 2 at the Frederick Parker Gallery is an exhibition of digitised and original sketchbooks which represent a visual mark-making narrative of the train journey that has been undertaken weekly by Mark Lewis from London Marylebone to Birmingham Snow Hill (and vice versa) on the Chiltern Mainline since April 2011. Mark’s working methods on these journeys are expressed through an extensive range of graphical media and drawing strategies including the use of an iPad. Mark's sketchbook journals are a response to the urban and rural landscape observed on the train journeys. Drawing from a moving train he attempts to establish a form of visual intimacy with a continually changing landscape viewed at different times of the day in all seasons

The exhibition, which follows a first Drawing the Line at Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, explores the relationship between visual perception and mark-making and the way in which new ways of seeing are encouraged by working spontaneously under self-imposed pressure. Semi-abstract visual metaphors capture landscape gestures, hidden structures, energies and patterns. These are representations or ‘visual cues’ which have the potential to tease out the truth of a landscape viewed at speed.

For the exhibition related sequences of pages from Mark's sketchbooks have been collaged together to create larger abstract images composed of many semi-abstract landscapes. In this practice his work can be compared with that of John Virtue, who "never makes direct transcriptions of his subjects, but rather uses the hundreds of drawings in his sketchbooks as a starting point for imagined or remembered landscapes." He is interested in making exciting abstractions from what he perceives.

In the 1980s Virtue exhibited large landscape paintings, "assembled from as many as 200 separate drawings placed on abutting panels in a grid formation." Andrew Graham-Dixon wrote of these images: "Each panel in a Virtue is different; this is not nature on the production line, but a potent image of the world's unknowability." In these works "the eye becomes lost in the labyrinth of forms established by the juxtaposition of different panels." Virtue stated, "I wanted to find a means of expression that tallied with my experience of being in the landscape, of being mobile in the landscape." In these images repetition and familiarity do not breed contempt, instead it "breeds a deeper and deeper love; a spiritual experience."

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Bruce Cockburn - Night Train.

Thursday, 1 May 2014

Sabbatical Art Pilgrimage: Supervision questions

Earlier in the weekend I had a very useful initial supervision session for my Sabbatical with Mark Lewis of commission4mission.

Mark is a jeweller and silversmith who has a longstanding interest in contemporary approaches to landscape drawing and painting. He was a principal lecturer at The Sir John Cass Faculty of Art, Architecture and Design until 2009 and presently teaches part-time at the School of Jewellery, Birmingham Institute of Art and Design and the Goldsmiths’ Centre in London. Drawing has always been central to his practice and recent work has focused on gestural and mark-making approaches to create forms of visual shorthand. Mark promotes these techniques in a variety of educational contexts as methods of capturing the essence of form and structure and as a stimulus to creative thinking.

Through the discussion we had about my Sabbatical plans we identified the following areas of focus:

telling the art historical story of modern Church commissions including factors leading to commissions and issues addressed during the commissioning process and beyond;
exploring if and how use is made of the artworks viewed in the context of the specific and wider Church; and
observing reactions and responses to the artworks in the context of worship.

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The Frames - Rise.