Painting as a means of theological reflection

whirlwind

During my recent sabbatical I went on pilgrimage, did some Bible study and had a retreat. Alongside that I decided to reflect on my experiences and studies in a way that did not confine my response to “head knowledge” – useful though that can often be. So for part of my theological reflection I painted my response.

The challenge was to find a way of planning and executing the work well without over-thinking it; in fact, I tried not to spend much time consciously thinking about the subject matter if I could help it. That did not mean donning a blindfold, waving my arms about and hoping that paint would land on canvas rather than on the floor, walls or ceiling. What it did mean was that I started out with a vague idea of the shape but otherwise painted randomly on the canvas. Colours were selected according to my mood or what I felt about the subject, rather than according to an accurate representation.

Of course this means that the results say as much about me at the time of painting as it does about the putative subject. However, there were some surprises along the way. For example, my first “Out of the Whirlwind” picture has a face and a two birds on it. They emerged from my random slapping on of thick acrylic paint when I was simply trying to break up the plain background. When I stepped back and saw them I decided not to paint over them but to go round them and let them stand out with a little extra colour here and there. The theological point is that while trying to convey the chaos of the whirlwind of Job chapter 38 verse 1, I ended up with something that made a kind of sense. You may recall that chapter 38 in Job is where Job hears God’s reply to his various complaints. God spoke out of the whirlwind (or storm). Chaos does not stop God being God – God brings order out of chaos (see Genesis chapter 1, for example). What the pictures mean will in part be up to each viewer.

The other pictures relate to the letter to Philemon and to the life of St Francis

Take a look here.

Out of the Whirlwind (1)

Job’s Comforter (1)

Job’s Comforter (2)

Job’s Comforter (3)

Job’s comforter (4)

What about the other slaves? (Letter to Philemon)

St Damian’s Cross

Sister Water (Canticle of the Sun)

Pop-up art gallery with Rolf Harris and Anneka Rice

various

EDIT, 2015: In light of Mr Harris’s criminal conviction, I was going to take this post down but that would be unfair on those artists who worked so hard on this project. Instead I have removed his pictures from here out of respect for his victims.

We queued in the Waterloo rain for well over an hour to see an exhibition of art “as seen on TV”. Unusually for modern art we were allowed to take photographs. In fact, I asked the curator twice, just to make sure and saw lots of people snapping away without hindrance – apart from the jostling crowds. Still, most people were polite and we all did our best to allow everyone to see and photo their favourites in turn.

I guess Rolf Harris is a bit like Marmite (love him or hate him) but on TV he seems a genuinely nice person and having seen his paintings on several occasions I would suggest that his talent is perhaps underrated. I happen to like his style (though not all his paintings). This exhibition featured amateur and professional artists – sixty in all – as part of a project to depict six decades of Her Majesty’s reign. There was a mixture of styles, interpretations and levels of skill. There were reminiscences of happier days as well as some humour and satire; portraits, street scenes, cartoon sketches and abstract paintings too.

Incidentally, the TV programme which drew our attention to this exhibition was of the “must be done before the deadline” variety but not as manic as those “SOS” programmes I avoid. A feature of this programme that impressed me was that the two “popular presenters” themselves actually could paint. I have not included Ms Rice’s work as it happened not to be one of my favourites but I would note that someone commented that “she has caught her [the Queen’s] stance well.”

collage

lino print

cartoon of the annus horribilis – the horrible year, 1992

The exhibition lasted less than a week and they had far more visitors than they expected. Apparently they usually accommodate a couple of hundred people for one of their theatre performances but on the first day of the exhibition they had fifteen hundred people passing through. Overall I would give the exhibition three stars or seven out of ten. I think I liked the idea of the project more than the actual pictures themselves.

[link removed]

Just a reminder: I do not own the copyright to these pictures so I cannot give you permission to use or copy them. I would guess that non-commercial use would be acceptable.

Falling upwards (1)

This post is really just an excuse to put up few photos of some paintings. I make no claim about their quality, relevance or artistry. They are here because they represent one part of my recovery from depression. After the initial shock, exhaustion, relief mixed with guilt, and numbness there was then a period of coming to terms with my situation. It was not the point where I started to get better; it was the point when the depth and extent of my depression and anxiety became clearer to me. If you like, it was then I began to understand how ill I had become.

Then came a stage (and I use the term “stage” only in a vague sense of ‘some period of time that followed’) when I felt that I was no longer falling down, so to speak, no longer at the bottom but beginning to ‘fall upwards’. This was not recovery or cure; my problems had not been solved – at best I had got many (but not all) of them described. This was not “the beginning of the end” but, as Sir Winston Churchill once said, it might have been the end of the beginning.

So, as Autumn came to an end I started painting. The idea was to indicate leaves falling upwards. No, contrary to a suggestion made by one member of my family, I did not do the picture and then simply turn it upside down! There are four pictures: the first with an approximate resemblance to leaves ‘falling’ off a tree; the second uses Autumn-leaf colours; the third takes one of the Autumn leaves (yellow) and puts it on a dark background; and the last reverses the colours. All are done with acrylic paints of varying quality and thickness on heavy-duty watercolour paper.

The point of the exercise for me was not to achieve great art. It was to attempt something creative. It was not so important that it was done well than that I should make the attempt. And that is the point. One of the tools/strategies for dealing with depression is to give ourselves permission to do things that we like. “Am I allowed to enjoy myself?” might seem like a strange question but for me it was one, along with “Am I allowed to be happy?”, that has hovered just beneath conscious thought for years; and the default answer seemed to be “No”. Not always ‘no’ but usually ‘no’. For me, these paintings represent my challenge to that unhelpful assumption. I did something that I enjoyed without having to ask permission. One step towards recovery.