It’s a nice bright clear day for a photshoot. Nativity Tancred is getting ready for his Cathedrals tour, but we haven't captured his image since his temple chest started filling with people. The Unfolding hasn’t made it to a digital life yet and we need to capture this moment. Today's the day!
Busy studio day
Enhanced Giclee print on the drawing table to big work to be completed with brass poles for Cathedral exhibition to illustrations on Lily (Surface Studio) for NHS book…a very happy E! I’ll let you know when you can buy/see/view any of them.
New phase - new art
Acrylics Elizabeth? Aren’t you an only an oil painter? Yes…but. Our fine art printer and we had a fabulous conversation last week. I’m going to be branching out into my paintings in whole or in details from, printed in a fine art way onto canvas, then I’m going to embellish them with paint. Acrylic settles with the ink better than oil and when varnished, is a fabulous new original. The good news for all of you is that it brings the prices down for an EGK canvas. I’m excited to get stuck in! Very.
Three Ages of human
When I have time, thoughts arrive. I had time today to notice what I see as three stages of becoming fully human.
First Age (0 - 35): Be born; grow up physically, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually, learn to connect with people, places and planet; become an adult in society.
Second age (35 - 70): become self, develop knowledge and skills aligned to deep self, become authentic in society, connect with communities
Third Age (70+): thrive, learn, contribute, travel to body's end
I may write more about this. I may not. The thoughts arrived as I was imagining how I would describe my increasingly thin flesh to my grandchildren. It’s later Second Age skin. It’s a simple description, not a descriptor of longevity. The ages I’ve given for each bracket are based on my observations in my Second Age. And, like many development stages in other arenas of life, the change from one state to another is not as neat as the categories suggest. I notice those who have never reached Second Age and those in in their Third Age earlier than others. Good.
People, red people, purple people, green people, orange people, groups of people, multicoloured people
The Unfolding is signed
It seems a good time to keep painting. Here is The Unfolding, with an average quality phone photo, but signed as done. Varnishing scheduled for February 2023, then framing, then available. I personally could sit with this for hours as I keep seeing more in it. The image itself unfolded on the folds of the fabric. As is so often the case with me, the canvas started as something else. Well, pieces of something else. I tied, stretched, stapled and wrapped four or five canvas pieces together back in the winter of 2015/2016 when I was on a half-time sabbatical from my United Reformed Church main work. For the sabbatical, I was looking at how communities were connecting with churches by use of the creative arts. The canvas strips coming together was about that connection. The piece started portrait layout and had hills and people. Frankly, it was not inspiring me, so when the sabbatical was finished, I painted it all out. It’s been calling me back ever since with a variety of colours, but no images. Ond day I turned it landscape just to see and here we are. I saw new things, new colours called from my palette and I began to think about creation itself, let alone the unfolding of ideas and feelings from anyone over anything. They emerge, not fully formed, enough to work with, enough to be going on with to learn and experience more. I guess it’s a painting about process, not completion. I like that.
Just saying (Church...)
I was writing to someone today who felt they had to defend their preference to use the word ministry in preference to Church. I wrote this little tirade.
I said, “I agree with you theologically. The institution was not commissioned by Jesus or Holy Spirit and the times people talk of Pentecost as the birthday of the Church does my head in. Pentecost was the fulfilment of the law which would be written into people's hearts - happening on the festival of the celebration of the Commandments. The institution was the result of the major appropriation of the Jesus Way people for political ends by a Roman Emperor. It was never supposed to be the way it has turned out, but people can be greedy when power slips their way. The number of denominations and colours of Christianity shows how much people have been arguing about what institution best 'holds' God ever since. God can't be held. We were only ever supposed to be communities of Jesus Way people wherever we could gather and care for each other and for the community. Our mission is not to add names to a list for a set of prescribed ways of connection; our mission is to enable Love to change a community for the better (to reduce fear, to bring hope, so much more).”
For me and for the recipient of my tirade, this is our position and we’re not alone. A significant number of us in this one of many faiths are absolutely committed to vision of church without walls. It is critically important in the culture we now live in. It is counter cultural to the conservative 'Christianity' which is dominating many countries' political narrative for narrow ends. Personally, as I have noted in my story sheet for my painting, The Stone Was Rolled Away, I am grateful for the institution because amongst all the ‘not called to be this way’ historical institutional activity, the core story was told and I was able to hear it. Personally, I am deeply grateful to the particular denomination I am in, the United Reformed Church, which is working hard at being inclusive, has ordained women for over 100 years, welcomes LGBTQ people in every part of church structure including it’s highest appointments (for a church with theoretically no hierarchy) and shows a counter cultural mix of cultures in its many congregations. Because the new age of well related peace is not yet here and because most of us exist in the capitalist empire/post empire world, we require the institution. My personal mission inside the institution is to support, wherever I can, the shaping of the institution so that it is pastoral, supportive, transparent, safe and as robust as necessary.
Rant over. For now.
Curious in Lemington Spa's Art in the Park
Curious, my recent completion, is hanging in Ginger the Art of Print's stall at Art in the Park this weekend
Chosen for Ginger's 2023 calendar, the original is at the top, their fabulous art print below and the calendar in my hands. The original Curious's amazing frame is bt Anna Lorimer, my new framer.
