Inspire: full exhibition hang

Inspire: art as spiritual exploration

Danielle Lovesey

Tree of Life

Blood shed for us

Danielle Lovesey's work is abstract, bright colours and the use of bold but visually interesting lines and blends of colour. Her focus is on biblical and spiritual imagery for her paintings, seeing an image in her mind she then moves to paint it.

'Run with the Fire' art talks and demonstration

The programme of art talks throughout the day at the 'Run with the Fire' exhibition today provided a broad exploration of approaches to the expression of spirituality in and through the visual arts, while Harvey Bradley provided a practical expression of the same with the painting demonstration.

Mark Lewis quoted Rudolf Steiner, who said that "art is the daughter of the divine," as he began his exploration of 'The Spiritual Image in Art'. He defined spiritual as the "depth dimension in life" as he outlined the way in which the development of abstract art built on the sense of mystery being probed outside of traditional representational Christian iconography by nineteenth century Romantics such as Caspar David Friedrich and J.M.W. Turner. Early abstractionists such as Mondrian, Kandinsky and Malevich had a sense that the spiritual world was governed by laws which mirrored natural laws and which could be expressed in visual form. Their works imply that there is a hidden logic in nature; a religious symmetry underpinning the material universe. As Plato stated, "God geometrizes." Similarly Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko were attempting to dig into metaphysical secrets by means of non objective art which equated to the 'Via Negativa'. He ended by highlighting the colour field paintings of Michael Finn with their sense of the sublime, density of experience and wonder of light.

Steve Scott quoted Rowan Williams as saying that the one thing he longed for was a "Christianity in this country able again to capture the imagination of our culture." Scott went on to outline the genesis of the 'Run with the Fire' project which provided the basis for this exhibition and which he hoped, in line with the butterfly effect, might be a small action leading to big effects. He explained how involvement in an arts conference held in Bali had kickstarted the idea of a DVD for the Olympics, initially intended for the Beijing Games and on the theme of guns into ploughshares. When this proved unfeasible for Beijing, other contacts led to Veritasse and commission4mission and the idea of a juried project on the Olympic/Pentecost imagery of fire. The 'Run with the Fire' project attracted 25 international artists and the DVD produced contained both a digital exhibition and a guide to setting up arts events. The DVD was slowly but surely generating new arts projects/exhibitions in various parts of the UK and abroad. The aim was to stay connected as the butterfly effect came into play.

In 'Stanley Spencer: A Visionary for our Time', Mark Lewis described Spencer as a unique non-conformist whose work does not conform to any movement but is a glorious celebration of the sacred in the everyday. Lewis used specific paintings by Spencer to outline his main themes and the development of his work. The two great influences on his work were the Bible and Cookham. He explored with sensual wonder a personal vision of Christianity in which redemption, resurrection and heaven are all now as everyone is embraced and elevated by a love which brings humanity back to God. His experiences during the First World War as a medical orderly brought him into contact with broken, shattered humanity and his work subsequently tried to recover a paradise lost.

In 'Praying with our eyes open' Glenn Lowcock began with the yearning of the Psalmist to see the face of the hidden God. God's invisibility could be associated with displeasure and doubt but also with renewal (Elijah on Mount Carmel) and searching (the Shekinah story of the presence of God being like scattered sparks buried deep in the world). John Berger wrote in Ways of Seeing that visibility is simply to do with seeing but also of being seen. God's seeing of us is part of his active creating. The hidden God became visible in Christ meaning that sight and images become a new way of approaching God. In the Eastern Church this leads to Church Art becoming one of the five sources of Church Tradition. Pavel Florensky writes of icons as a window through which the divine is seen in prayer. The conversion of St Francis began with scripture and was confirmed through sight of a crucifix in the Church of St Damiano. Christ's eyes are open on the crucifix which captivated Francis. He is looking into our world, our space. In response, St Francis and St Clare open their eyes wide to gaze on God and on his world. St Clare encourages us to study our face in him.

In 'Emotional Tourist', Steve Scott described his journey from modernism, through post-modernity to a meta-modernity that combines ideas and media, working across mediums through relational processes. The visual depiction of Trinitarian relationality contained in Rublev's icon of the Trinity served as his thesis statement. His 1989 trip to Bali (where shadow play stories from John's Gospel had informed the Eucharist) and his 2011 trip to Isenheim (where Grunewald's altarpiece depicts Christ as co-sufferer with those celebrating ther Eucharist) were the personal bookends to this journey. Within this he had also drawn on relational aesthetics and social applications of open systems processes. His 'Crossing the Boundaries' open systems project with Gaylen Stewart was one result from this thinking and Lilias Trotter had become a role model for his thinking on process, relationship and dialogue. He shared spoken word performances and images on these themes to a backing of sound loops.

Finally, Jonathan Evens pointed to the pervasiveness of religious and spiritual themes in twentieth century and contemporary Western art by giving a whistlestop and inevitably partial tour of these religious themes and some of those artists that have used them. He began with the catalytic encounter of Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin in Brittany in 1888 which resulted in Post Impressionist paintings exploring the Catholic soul of Breton peasants. Bernard and Gauguin shared their new style with Paul Sérusier who, together with fellow art students including Maurice Denis, formed the Nabis. Denis became one of the most significant artists in the French Catholic Revival, being prominent in the Nabis, as a Symbolist, and, through his Studios of Sacred Art, contributing to a revival of French Sacred Art. Denis’ influence was felt among Symbolists and Sacred Artists in Belgium, Italy, Russia and Switzerland, in particular.

A second circle of influence within the French Catholic Revival gathered around the philosopher Jacques Maritain. His book Art and Scholasticism was influential and he organised study circles for artists and others including the Expressionist Georges Rouault, the Surrealist Jean Cocteau, the Futurist Gino Severini, the Dadaist Otto van Rees and abstract art promoter Michel Seupher. His writings were also significant for the community of artists which formed around the sculptor Eric Gill at Ditchling, which included the artist and poet David Jones. Jones further developed Maritain’s ideas of images as signs in his paintings, poetry and critical writings. A third circle of influence gathered around cubist pioneer Albert Gleizes, including Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone (who played significant roles in the development of Modern Art in Ireland) and Australian potter Anne Dangar. Like Eric Gill at Ditchling, Gleizes formed a Catholic arts colony to further his ideas which embraced both painting and society seeking to identify natural rhythms for both.

A final circle of influence developed around the Dominican Friars, Marie-Alan Couturier and Pie Régamey, who insisted that the Roman Catholic Church call for the great artists and architects of their day to design and decorate its churches. The involvement of artists such as Marc Chagall, Férnand Leger, Le Corbusier, and Henri Matisse in churches such as Assy, Ronchamp and Vence was proof of the effectiveness of their approach and ministry. A similar approach was taken in the UK by George Bell and Walter Hussey which saw artists such as Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland, John Piper, Hans Feibusch and Cecil Collins decorating churches.

Expressionist artists such as Emil Nolde, Christian Rohlfs and Albert Servaes painted biblical scenes with an emotional intensity that was often more than the institutional churches at the time could accept. Georges Rouault added to this expressionist intensity with a compassionate Christian critique of contemporary society. Italian Divisionism and Futurism also included a strong strand of sacred art through artists such as Gaetano Previati, Gerardo Dottori, and Fillia.

Wassily Kandinsky created abstract art by abstracting from apocalyptic biblical images and felt that abstraction was the best means available to artists for depicting an unseen realm. Kasimir Malevich was not only influenced by the tradition of Russian icon painting but also by the underlying principle of icons – the presence of an Absolute in the world – to develop the Suprematist aim of self-transcendence.

Daniel Siedell writes that “for these and many other avant-garde painters well into the twentieth century, including Russian immigrants John Graham and Mark Rothko, modern painting functioned like an icon, creating a deeply spiritual, contemplative relationship between the object and viewer.” The influence also went the other way too, as Abstract Expressionist William Congdon converted to Roman Catholicism and used this style to create deeply expressive crucifixions.

Iconographer, Aidan Hart, notes that a revival of traditional iconography occurred in the twentieth century; led in Greece by Photius Kontoglou, in Russia by Maria Sakalova and Archimandrite Zenon, and in Europe by Leonid Ouspensky and Fr. Gregory Kroug. More surprisingly, a Lutheran tradition of iconography has also developed in Scandanavia led by Erland Forsberg.

Evangelicalism found artistic expression through the folk art of the American South with artists such as Howard Finster and Sister Gertrude Morgan gaining significant reputations. Such artists have often been both naive and visionary in their style, an approach that also characterised the work of New Zealand artist Colin MacCahon and British artist, Albert Herbert. Other significant visionary artists using Christian themes and imagery have included Stanley Spencer, F.N. Souza, Betty Swanwick, Norman Adams, Roger Wagner and Mark Cazalet.

In response to the growth of Christian Art on the Asian continent, the Asian Christian Art Association was founded in 1978 to encourage the visual arts in Asian churches. Australia encouraged contemporary religious art through the establishment of the Blake Prize in1951. From that date until the present, its judges have chosen as prize winners artists and works which reflect the movement in Modern Art from the figurative to the abstract. Wojciech Wlodarczyk notes that one special aspect of Polish Art in the 1980s was its links with the Roman Catholic Church. Martial law forced the entire artistic community to boycott official exhibition spaces and instead places of worship hosted exhibitions. This period was marked by a profound interest in the whole question of the sacrum in art and was characterised by the work of Jerzy Nowosielski with its thoughts on the nature of religious art.

There has been extensive use of Christian imagery by BritArt artists such as Damien Hirst, Chris Ofili, Mark Wallinger, and Sam Taylor-Wood. In their work, Christian iconography and narrative is often used as a frame for the artist’s critique of contemporary life including politics and culture. Finally, on this whistle-stop tour, the work of Lynn Aldrich, Betty Spackman, Peter Howson and Makoto Fujimura provide examples of artists expressing aspects of their Christian faith through work accepted and understood within the mainstream world of contemporary art.

As issues of religion have been largely overlooked in the social and cultural history of twentieth-century art, we need, as curator and author Daniel Siedell has argued, "an alternative history and theory of the development of modern art, revealing that Christianity has always been present with modern art, nourishing as well as haunting it, and that modern art cannot be understood without understanding its religious and spiritual components and aspirations." 

ArtWay Meditation

Jonathan Evens has written the ArtWay Visual Meditation for 9th October based on Descent II by Christopher Clack.

His meditation, which ends with the question 'What would be the impact, I wonder, were we more frequently to take religious images out of their religious context, as Clack has done, and trust them to raise their questions and reveal their meanings in other landscapes, cultures and worlds?', can be read by clicking here.

Descent II will feature in the next commission4mission exhibition to be held at the Tokarska Gallery from 1st - 31st December 2011 (Thursdays - Saturdays, 12 noon - 7.00pm). The next exhibition at the Tokarska Gallery is 4 Man Show from 14 - 29 October.

Also published today on the ArtWay site is an essay by Jonathan about the significance of the imagery of clowns in the life and work of Albert Houthuesen entitled 'The spirituality of the Artist-Clown.' 

Alan Hitching

Trinity

Hands

Alan Hitching is a poet and potter. He says that poetry and pottery are like two languages for him. Words he has used all his life in poetry to express feelings and faith, the other language of clay he has only over the last 15 years since he was challenged to learn. Joy has come when the two languages speak on the same topic at the same time, expressing together his thoughts and feelings on subjects. Alan is available to speak about these two languages, show examples of his work, share related poems and introduce the spirituality that underpins and informs his work.

Spirituality - the heartbeat of Art? (3)

In the third presentation from the Art & Spirituality networking evening at St Andrews Leytonstone, where three artists addressed the question 'Spirituality - the heartbeat of Art?', Mark Lewis speaks about spirituality in art as a sense of aliveness:

"I have taken something of a comparative approach and a very personal outlook on art and the spiritual. Heartbeat means life. No heartbeat no life. This rings chords with me because although I think that to a great extent all art has the potential to be spiritual … a real authentic spiritual heartbeat occurs when it brings about a certain sense of aliveness (I don’t just mean well-being) a heightened awareness; a depth or altered state of consciousness; a quickening of the human spirit. It’s a struggle to find the right kind of descriptive language to speak of these things, but I think Kandinsky got very close to it when he spoke of “a vibration in the soul”.

To be truly spiritual it has to be something that engages us, unites us, awakens us, gives a deeper loving engagement with life. It is something that sacralises, and at the same time, gives access to an experience of the sacred. It can be both medium and message. I am wary of trying to pin down these experiences because they are subjective and work at different level with different people. But, for the Christian tradition, it is the Spirit that gives life and it is the Spirit that speaks to our heart through the richness of art.

Many artists have always recognized a hidden spirituality in what they are doing. They are aware of an indefinable "other" which inspires artists and leads them into ever deeper creativity. The work of Rothko and Stanley Spencer, although dramatically different, have impressed me deeply….

Rothko

His paintings have a mysterious contemplative quality; a pure emotional experience… the spiritual power of non-objective art Some have observed to witness these paintings is to submit one’s self to a spiritual experience, which, through its transcendence of subject matter, approximates that of consciousness itself.

One is forced to approach the limits of experience and awakens one to the awareness of one’s own existence… confronted with silence and nothingness… in a very curious sense we are aware of our own heartbeat…

To stand before a Rothko painting (for me) is to be aware of ones own aliveness or being.

Stanley Spencer

Spencer was a devout Christian and believed God resided in all things and the miraculous could be found in everyday events. His paintings proclaim that Christ is in all things. In his paintings, Cookham becomes the setting for scenes from the life of Christ and other Christian narratives.

The ordinary and the everyday takes on a different significance.. we are encouraged to
look it through a different lens. ….not always rose-coloured… but a lens that allows us
to make deeper connections we would otherwise not make. Ordinary situations and things take on a greater significance.

Spencer sacralised everything. To contemplate his art is to enter into the deep resonances sacredness in the world…. It is aliveness..

Christ before Pilate by Mark Lewis

Me

I am passionate about drawing and its search for truthfulness. I end here (or perhaps in one sense I begin). We need to acknowledge more than we do that the act of making art as a truly spiritual act. It is also where the heart beats and where I feel most spiritually alive. Engagement with looking is important… but in the act of drawing we can participate in a spiritual process

The words of Ingres are often quoted: “Drawing is the probity of art…” I don’t think that I am the only artist who believes that drawing can be an altered state of consciousness, a form of meditation; a way of evolving to higher levels of awareness.

In the act of drawing, there is a point in time when ones concentration is focussed so intently on the work that time stands still. All distractions disappear. The artists merges with his or her work. One becomes part of the life or spiritual energy of what you draw. In some ways this a very Zen outlook. We draw attentively and we become what we draw. It brings about an intimacy. Seeing and drawing becoming one. It is a kind of love-making. It is a way of loving the world.

Drawing leads you into different kinds of truths (as no doubt painting does). At its best it is always process, a spiritual search with shifting boundaries. Like the religious journey… the journey is in many ways more important than the goal.

My drawing technique searches and often never arrives… line brings form alive but it can also unite and coalesce the deeper meanings of a narrative (e.g. the Stations of the Cross) …

Conclusion

In a very brief and fragmentary way I have tried to discern the ways in which art enlivens me and that this is uniting theme. I can relate to many art forms in this way, particularly landscape. I can relate strongly to the idea of art as prayer (Sister Wendy Beckett speaks of it in these terms).

Contemporary African writer Ben Okri claims that "ALL art is a prayer" and then he adds that it is basically a prayer for spiritual strength. Prayer - difficult though it sometimes is - is a form of communion. A deep engagement. It keeps our spiritual heart beating."

Spirituality - the heartbeat of Art? (2)

'The Baptism of Jesus'

A Church Holiday Club set

'Jesus in the Garden'

Rosalind Hore

In the second presentation from the Art & Spirituality networking evening at St Andrews Leytonstone, where three artists addressed the question 'Spirituality - the heartbeat of Art?', Rosalind Hore speaks about her work as the exaggeration of emotion:

Rosalind began her presentation by explaining that she grew up in a Church of Scotland manse and first remembers encountering Christian imagery through the Victorian images of Christ used in Sunday School at the time. She also developed early on a sense of being involved in the Church's year. She studied images of Christ during her sculpture course at Art College and was inspired by Michelangelo, El Greco, and Rodin.

She seeks to express exaggerated emotion in her work through the use of elongated stylized figures, strong colour and sweeping folds, which exaggerate both movement and emotion. She uses Christian symbols frequently in her paintings; flames, waters of baptism, doves, cross etc. Her Stations of the Cross each feature three rose buds as a sign of the Trinity. The Stations of the Cross have been a big influence on her and she has, to date, completed six bas-relief Stations and six paintings.

Her sculptures are all modelled and she works in clay, concrete and plaster. All of her sculptural work can be cast in bronze. Concrete and plaster involve use of an iron armature. Greater detail is possible when working in clay but, when working in concrete or plaster, shapes are simplified and greater use is made of sweeping folds and lines.

Rosalind has also produced a number of functional pieces for Church festivals and to enhance worship. These have included meditative pieces for Good Friday devotions and Festival displays. She retired from art teaching four years ago but, as a Rector's wife, has initiated an Art group at each church they have ministered in. The current group at St Laurence Upminster have a permanent display board in church with a changing display of work to reflect the seasons.

She said that art and faith are why she gets up in the morning and that the whole of her life is involved with these two things.

Rosalind ended by showing images of her work (see representative examples above) and spoke about each piece in terms of its imagery and inspiration. To illustrate the interaction in her work between inspiration and worship she spoke of being inspired to create a Corpus Christi image by paying attention to the priest holding the host and cup during the Eucharist. She said that non-religious themes can also provide a sense of spirituality particularly through the joy in creation of a still life or landscape.

Spirituality - the heartbeat of art? (1)

What follows is the text of Jonathan Evens' presentation in responding to the question 'Spirituality - the heartbeat of Art?' at the Art & Spirituality networking evening held at St Andrews Leytonstone:

"Sooner or later, if you love art, you will come across a strange fact: there is almost no modern religious art in museums or in books of art history. It is a state of affairs that is at once obvious and odd, known to everyone and yet hardly whispered about ... a certain kind of academic art historical writing treats religion as an interloper, something that just has no place in serious scholarship ... Straightforward talk about religion is rare in art departments and art schools, and wholly absent from art journals unless the work in question is transgressive. Sincere, exploratory religious and spiritual work goes unremarked. Students who make works that are infused with spiritual or religious meanings must normally be content with analysis of their works' formal properties, technique, or mode of presentation. Working artists concerned with themes of spirituality (again, excepting work that is critical or ironic about religion) normally will not attract the attention of people who write for art magazines ... An observer of the art world might well come to the conclusion that religious practice and religious ideas are not relevant to the art world unless they are treated with scepticism."

So writes James Elkins at the beginning of a book entitled On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art. On that basis the answer to tonight’s question would seem to be a resounding “no”. And yet, as Elkins also notes, these attitudes are odd, because there is a tremendous amount of religious art created.

Timothy Potts suggests in Beyond Belief: Modern art and the Religious Imagination, that “the pervasiveness of broadly religious and spiritual themes in twentieth-century Western art may at first seem to stand in contradiction to the secularization of so many aspects of life and culture during our times.”

“The religious underpinnings of so much Western art before [the twentieth] century – from its subject matter to its sources of patronage and its devotional purposes – are obvious and uncontentious,” he continues, but with the art of the twentieth century the religious dimension becomes “altogether more subtle, often more abstract and inevitably more personal.” Spirituality, while continuing to be pervasive, becomes less obvious and the perception grows that it is “not relevant to the art world.”

My answer to tonight’s question therefore is to point to the pervasiveness of religious and spiritual themes in twentieth century and contemporary Western art and in the remainder of my time that is what I aim to do by giving a whistlestop and inevitably partial tour of these religious themes and some of those artists that have used them.

The catalytic encounter of Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin in Brittany in 1888 resulted in Post Impressionist paintings exploring the Catholic soul of Breton peasants. Bernard and Gauguin shared their new style with Paul Sérusier who, together with fellow art students including Maurice Denis, formed the Nabis.

Denis became one of the most significant artists in the French Catholic Revival, being prominent in the Nabis, as a Symbolist, and, through his Studios of Sacred Art, contributing to a revival of French Sacred Art. Denis’ influence was felt among Symbolists and Sacred Artists in Belgium, Italy, Russia and Switzerland, in particular.

A second circle of influence within the French Catholic Revival gathered around the philosopher Jacques Maritain. His book Art and Scholasticism was influential and he organised study circles for artists and others including the Expressionist Georges Rouault, the Surrealist Jean Cocteau, the Futurist Gino Severini, the Dadaist Otto van Rees and abstract art promoter Michel Seupher. His writings were also significant for the community of artists which formed around the sculptor Eric Gill at Ditchling, which included the artist and poet David Jones. Jones further developed Maritain’s ideas of images as signs in his paintings, poetry and critical writings.

A third circle of influence gathered around cubist pioneer Albert Gleizes, including Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone (who played significant roles in the development of Modern Art in Ireland) and Australian potter Anne Danger. Like Eric Gill at Ditchling, Gleizes formed a Catholic arts colony to further his ideas which embraced both painting and society seeking to identify natural rhythms for both.

A final circle of influence developed around the Dominican Friars, Marie-Alain Couturier and Pie Régamey, who insisted that the Roman Catholic Church call for the great artists and architects of their day to design and decorate its churches. The involvement of artists such as Marc Chagall, Férnand Leger, Le Corbusier, and Henri Matisse in churches such as Assy, Ronchamp and Vence was proof of the effectiveness of their approach and ministry. A similar approach was taken in the UK by George Bell and Walter Hussey which saw artists such as Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland, John Piper, Hans Feibusch and Cecil Collins decorating churches.

Expressionist artists such as Emil Nolde, Christian Rohlfs and Albert Servaes painted biblical scenes with an emotional intensity that was often more than the institutional churches at the time could accept. Georges Rouault added to this expressionist intensity with a compassionate Christian critique of contemporary society. Italian Divisionism and Futurism also included a strong strand of sacred art through artists such as Gaetano Previati, Gerardo Dottori, and Fillia.

Wassily Kandinsky created abstract art by abstracting from apocalyptic biblical images and felt that abstraction was the best means available to artists for depicting an unseen realm. Kasimir Malevich was not only influenced by the tradition of Russian icon painting but also by the underlying principle of icons – the presence of an Absolute in the world – to develop the Suprematist aim of self-transcendence.

Daniel Siedell writes that “for these and many other avant-garde painters well into the twentieth century, including Russian immigrants John Graham and Mark Rothko, modern painting functioned like an icon, creating a deeply spiritual, contemplative relationship between the object and viewer.” The influence also went the other way too, as Abstract Expressionist William Congdon converted to Roman Catholicism and used this style to create deeply expressive crucifixions.

Iconographer, Aidan Hart, notes that a revival of traditional iconography occurred in the twentieth century; led in Greece by Photius Kontoglou, in Russia by Maria Sakalova and Archimandrite Zenon, and in Europe by Leonid Ouspensky and Fr. Gregory Kroug. More surprisingly, a Lutheran tradition of iconography has also developed in Scandanavia led by Erland Forsberg.

Evangelicalism found artistic expression through the folk art of the American South with artists such as Howard Finster and Sister Gertrude Morgan gaining significant reputations. Such artists have often been both naive and visionary in their style, an approach that also characterised the work of New Zealand artist Colin MacCahon and British artist, Albert Herbert.

Other significant visionary artists using Christian themes and imagery have included Stanley Spencer, F.N. Souza, Betty Swanwick, Norman Adams, Roger Wagner and Mark Cazalet.

In response to the growth of Christian Art on the Asian continent, the Asian Christian Art Association was founded in 1978 to encourage the visual arts in Asian churches. Australia encouraged contemporary religious art through the establishment of the Blake Prize in1951. From that date until the present, its judges have chosen as prize winners artists and works which reflect the movement in Modern Art from the figurative to the abstract. Wojciech Wlodarczyk notes that one special aspect of Polish Art in the 1980s was its links with the Roman Catholic Church. Martial law forced the entire artistic community to boycott official exhibition spaces and instead places of worship hosted exhibitions. This period was marked by a profound interest in the whole question of the sacrum in art and was characterised by the work of Jerzy Nowosielski with its thoughts on the nature of religious art.

Finally, on this whistle-stop tour, there has been extensive use of Christian imagery by BritArt artists such as Damien Hirst, Chris Ofili, Mark Wallinger, and Sam Taylor-Wood. In their work, Christian iconography and narrative is often used as a frame for the artist’s critique of contemporary life including politics and culture.

As was argued at the beginning of this talk, issues of religion have been largely overlooked in the social and cultural history of twentieth-century art. As curator and author Daniel Siedell has argued, we need "an alternative history and theory of the development of modern art, revealing that Christianity has always been present with modern art, nourishing as well as haunting it, and that modern art cannot be understood without understanding its religious and spiritual components and aspirations."

Anne Creasey

'St. Paul' (from fragment of altar panel, Basilica of San Vincente de Avila, 12th Century) and 'Peace'


'Consider the Lilies'

Anne Creasey is a textile artist and embroiderer working in a variety of styles from traditional to abstract and experimental. She is very interested in helping people discover their spirituality through the creative process.

As an amateur painter, Anne rarely produced religious art but, six years ago, she gave up painting to concentrate on embroidery and textile art which were, for her, more natural media for expressing religious ideas and imagery. She has one criteria and that is to create something of beauty.

Her work includes traditional embroidery, appliqué with painted fabric and includes a large range of materials, from yarns and threads to plastic bags. If it can be sewn down, it can be used! Subject matter includes the figurative and the abstract. Anne prefers to produce wall hangings as she likes to work on a fairly large scale. Panels are usually, but not always, framed without glass so as not to lose the textural qualities of the piece.

Art & Spirituality exhibition

Together with St Andrew’s Church Leytonstone we are planning to hold a summer exhibition on the theme of Art and Spirituality for the Leytonstone Festival and Leytonstone Arts Trail.

The exhibition details are as follows:

• Community launch and preview: Sunday 5 July, 2009 , 12 noon – 2pm.
• Exhibition Opening Times: Tuesday 7 – Thursday 16 July, 2009; Tuesday-Friday: 12-4 pm; Saturday: 10-4pm.

St Andrews and ourselves will also be organising a networking event on the theme of Art and Spirituality on Thursday 9 July from 7.00-9.30pm. This event will be run in conjunction with Waltham Forest Deanery.

We plan to have three speakers making 10 minute presentations each on a question such as 'Spirituality: the hidden heartbeat of art?' followed by discussion and debate. Please put this date and time in your diaries, as it would be great to see you at this event and to have your input to the discussion.

Michael J. Creasey

Spire, Gethsemene & Annunciation

All Saints & St Faiths Church, Childerditch

Michael J. Creasey is a largely self-taught artist, specializing in portraits and figurative work, mostly nudes. He also paints abstracts. He works primarily in acrylics, but also paints watercolours, and has recently returned to oils after a long break. He keeps up a regular regime of life-drawing, which he sees as central to his work.

Michael has exhibited locally in Havering and at the Mall Galleries and elsewhere, and has undertaken many portrait commissions. Though not primarily a religious artist, he has a wide knowledge of art history and is interested in the way art has been and should continue to be employed by the Church. Sutherland and Piper are important influences.

Though he sees his abstract works, of all his output, as most embodying a 'spiritual' dimension, he is at present working on more overtly religious subjects, as a result of his membership of commission4mission.

Michael says, "I am not especially a religious painter, as I mainly paint portraits and figure studies, but I do also paint abstract works which tap into emotional and spiritual aspects of my life and reflect my Christianity."