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Showing posts with label wagner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wagner. Show all posts

Sunday, 31 August 2025

Artlyst: The Art Diary September 2025

My latest Art Diary for Artlyst being for August/September provides an opportunity to look back as well as look forward. The celebrations for the centenary of Francis Newton Souza’s birth culminated in the first half of 2025. Other work exploring Christian themes or by Christian artists can be seen at MOCA Machynlleth, Gilbert White’s House, 54 Gallery (Society of Catholic Artists), Bradford 2025 (Methodist Collection of Modern Art), and The Mayor Gallery. Exhibitions of work by Marian Spore Bush and Sean Scully draw on the inspiration of nature, while Spore Bush and Juliette Minchin take inspiration from spiritualism and mysticism. Lucy Sparrow, Malcolm Doney, Petra Feriancová and Amanda Kyritsopoulou all draw inspiration from daily life. I end with two exhibitions on themes of diversity and inclusion.

My other pieces for Artlyst are:

Interviews -
Monthly diary articles -
Articles/Reviews -
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Glen Hansard - Bird Of Sorrow.
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Friday, 9 February 2024

Art review: Everywhere is Heaven: Stanley Spencer and Roger Wagner at the Stanley Spencer Gallery, Cookham

My latest exhibition review for Church Times is on “Everywhere is Heaven: Stanley Spencer and Roger Wagner” is at the Stanley Spencer Gallery:

'Ultimately, in terms of look and feel, I think that Wagner is closer to his peers, such as Mark Cazalet and Thomas Denny, with whom and others he is part of a loose grouping, than to either Spencer or Blake, although being part of a clear lineage that includes both. Transcendent trees are a significant feature of the work of Cazalet, Denny, and Wagner, particularly in church contexts; and Wagner’s The Flowering Tree is a particularly wonderful example. These are Edenic trees of life, which often, as here, include reference to the tree on which Christ was crucified.

Such reference and focus may place this group of artists closer to the visions of artists such as Samuel Palmer and David Jones than to those of Spencer and Blake. The synergies and contrasts generated by this fascinating exhibition point, perhaps, towards a further and broader exhibition to document the legacy and lineage of British visionary art from Blake onwards, and encompass those mentioned in this review, among others, including Spencer and Wagner in particular.'

Click here to read my Seen & Unseen article on this exhibition and the tradition of visionary artists whose works shed light on the material and spiritual worlds. The friendship between Mark Cazalet, Thomas Denny, Richard Kenton Webb, Nicholas Mynheer, and Roger Wagner is explored here. My writings on Richard Kenton Webb can be read here and 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, those for Seen & Unseen are here, and those for Art+Christianity are here.

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Roger Wagner - I Saw The Seraphim.
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Saturday, 13 January 2024

Seen & Unseen: The visionary artists finding heaven down here

My latest article for Seen&Unseen is 'The visionary artists finding heaven down here' in which I explore a tradition of visionary artists whose works shed light on the material and spiritual worlds:

'Everywhere is Heaven is an art exhibition of work by Stanley Spencer and Roger Wagner at the Stanley Spencer Gallery in Cookham. It’s the English village where Spencer lived most of his life and which he described as a “village in heaven”. ‘Everywhere is heaven’ is also a description of sacramental theology and a theme for British Visionary artists from William Blake to the present day.

Everywhere is Heaven is the gallery’s first collaboration with a living artist. Wagner has been deeply inspired by Spencer’s paintings, viewing Spencer as being “an artist who seemed to be doing exactly what I wanted to do”...

The work of these two artists has been brought together, in part, because both work in the tradition initiated by the visionary poet and artist, William Blake.'

For more on Stanley Spencer click here, here, and here. For more on Visionary artists click here.

My first article for Seen&Unseen was 'Life is more important than art' which reviews the themes of recent art exhibitions that tackle life’s big questions and the roles creators take.

My second article 'Corinne Bailey Rae’s energised and anguished creative journey' explores inspirations in Detroit, Leeds and Ethiopia for Corinne Bailey Rae’s latest album, Black Rainbows, which is an atlas of capacious faith.

My third article was an interview with musician and priest Rev Simpkins in which we discussed how music is an expression of humanity and his faith.

My fourth article was a guide to the Christmas season’s art, past and present. Traditionally at this time of year “great art comes tumbling through your letterbox” so, in this article, I explore the historic and contemporary art of Christmas.

My fifth article was 'Finding the human amid the wreckage of migration'. In this article I interview Shezad Dawood about his multimedia Leviathan exhibition at Salisbury Cathedral where personal objects recovered from ocean depths tell a story of modern and ancient migrations

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Clifford T Ward - The Travellers.
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Monday, 20 November 2023

A weekend of music, art, poetry and a Confirmation Service


































On Friday, at St Andrew's Wickford, Suffolk-Essex musician, Rev Simpkins, presented an evening of acoustic music of great imagination and charm, inspired by the history and geography of East Anglia.

The Rev performed songs from his acclaimed folk albums Big Sea and Saltings, before his band Pissabed Prophet, formed with Dingus Khan’s Ben Brown and Nick Daldry, took to the stage to play their first ever acoustic set.

The Rev’s sweeping melodies, rich harmonies, and fascinating lyrics have won him both a cult following and national acclaim. This was a rare chance to experience the breadth of the Rev’s work in one evening.

Read my interview for Seen&Unseen with Rev Simpkins (in which we discuss how music is an expression of humanity and his faith) and my review of Pissabed Prophet for International Times.

Yesterday, I attended Everywhere is Heaven: Malcolm Guite, Christopher Southgate, Roger Wagner, a poetry reading to open Everywhere is Heaven: Stanley Spencer/Roger Wagner, an exhibition at the Stanley Spencer Gallery in Cookham. The poetry reading took place in Holy Trinity Cookham, the setting of Spencer's Cookham Resurrection.

The exhibition is the Gallery’s first collaboration with a living artist. Roger Wagner has been deeply inspired by Stanley Spencer’s paintings, and both artists have been described as ‘visionary geniuses’, each seeking to evoke the mystical in everyday experience. Just as Spencer found Cookham to be ‘heaven on earth’, so Roger evokes biblical happenings in contemporary settings.

Born in 1957, Roger Wagner read English at Oxford University before studying at the Royal Academy School of Art. He has been represented in London since 1985 by Anthony Mould Ltd exhibiting there many times. Other one man shows include retrospectives at the Ashmolean Museum in 1994 and 2010. He has produced several books of illustrated poems and translations: Fire Sonnets (1984), In a Strange Land (1988), A Silent Voice (1997), Out of the Whirlwind (1997). The Book of Praises – a translation of the psalms Book One(1994), Book Two (2008), Book Three (2013).

Malcolm Guite is the former Chaplain of Girton College, Cambridge and author of various books on contemporary spirituality. In addition to this he is a poet and singer-songwriter and fronts the Cambridge-based band Mystery Train. In 2023 he was awarded the Lanfranc Award for Education and Scholarship, for his outstanding multifaceted promotion of the Gospels through poetry, public speaking and scholarship.

Christopher Southgate works at the University of Exeter as a Professor in Theology. He has been publishing his poetry since 1985. He is the author of nine collections of poetry, including a verse biography of T.S. Eliot – A Love and its Sounding (Salzburg, 1997). He has won a number of awards for poetry. He was also commended in the 2009 National Poetry Competition, and shortlisted for the 2022 Bridport Prize.

Today, we have had a Basildon Deanery Confirmation Service at St Gabriel's Pitsea led by The Rt Revd Adam Atkinson, the new Bishop of Bradwell who spoke about encouraging one another as we go forward on our faith journeys. There were 18 candidates from three parishes, including two from Wickford and Runwell.

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Pissabed Prophet - Waspdrunk.

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Wednesday, 1 November 2023

Artlyst: November Art Diary

My November Art Diary for Artlyst highlights exhibitions in Cambridge, Venice, Hastings, Lisbon, St David’s, Cookham and Colchester which explore aspects of relationships. These range from the familial to the transcendent through the work of Chantal Joffe, Celia Paul, Nengi Omuku, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Raul Speek, Stanley Spencer and Roger Wagner, among others:

'‘Everywhere is Heaven: Stanley Spencer & Roger Wagner’ is the Stanley Spencer Gallery’s first collaboration with a living artist. Roger Wagner has been deeply inspired by Stanley Spencer’s paintings, and both artists have been described as ‘visionary geniuses’, each seeking to evoke the mystical in everyday experience. Just as Spencer found Cookham to be ‘heaven on earth’, so Wagner evokes biblical happenings in contemporary settings.

A number of works by Wagner, who is also a published poet, will be hung alongside Spencer’s from the Gallery Collection and the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge, including ‘Builders of the Tower of Babel’ and ‘Making Columns for the Tower of Babel’. The two artists are united by a love of ‘metaphysicals’, as Spencer would have said, including the poets John Donne and Thomas Traherne. Traherne, in particular, wrote with a visionary innocence and found mysticism in the natural world. The title of the exhibition references Spencer’s own words about his painting, ‘John Donne arriving in Heaven’, which has been loaned for this exhibition, and his description of the four figures facing in all directions because ‘everywhere is heaven so to speak’.'

My other pieces for Artlyst are:

Interviews -
Monthly diary articles -

Articles/Reviews -

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Roger Wagner - I Saw The Seraphim.
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