Bleached
Photographs by Mary Davies
The Crucifixion: A Sonnet by John O'Donohue
When at last it comes, it comes in silence;
With no thought for the one to whom it comes,
Or how a heart grieves itself and loved ones
With that last glimpse from its fading presence.
Yet it is intimate, the act of death,
To be so chosen, exposed and taken.
Nowhere untouched. But death wants you broken.
The soldiers must wait ages for your last breath.
With all the bright words, you are found out too,
In agony and terror in vaulted air,
Your mind bleached white by a wind from nowhere
That has waited years for one strike at you.
A slanted rain cuts across the black day.
It turns stones crimson where the cross is laid.
© Mary Davies 2020
God saw all that he had made, and it was very good
EX DIVINA / PVLCHRITVDINE / ESSE OMNIVM / DERIVATVR
‘The beauty of God is the cause of the being of all that is’ From Thomas Aquinus’s commentary on the ‘Divine Names’, a mystical classical work by Dionysius the Areopagite.
I love this quote for its insight. It has been the inspiration for my painting for this year’s creation and climate change theme.
Litany for creation
The pain of the earth is raw,
like the pain of a mother
whose children are torn
from the softness and warmth of her breast.
The creatures of earth are torn
from the land
their ancestors roamed,
from the source of their health and renewal.
Humankind has been tearing the earth
and burning without limitation;
we consume the fruits of the fields,
pollute the rivers and streams.
And so creation is bound
in a terrible cycle of death
denying God’s promise to each creature
held close to her heart.
We must rise in the freedom we have,
repent of our failure to care,
restore a just balance to earth
by letting it teach us to love.
So might creation be healed
and God’s heart be eased of its pain.
Yvonne Morland
During my painting, I often listened to and was moved by some Bach cello suites. I found myself particularly drawn to the Sarabande of Suite 5, it has a haunting beauty but with a disquiet that seemed to match the painting as it developed. You might like to listen too (3.18 minutes). I found it on an album of suites 1, 5 & 6 by Yo-Yo Ma - on Spotify.
© Charlie Shepherd 2020
Diary Drawings
I’ve selected these 7 drawings from a series I made between 1997-2008, during which time I went through a period of extreme mental distress. Over those 11 years I kept a visual diary producing one drawing a week - 711 drawings in all.
In 2009 a major exhibition of some of the drawings, Bobby Baker’s Diary Drawings: Mental Illness and Me 1997-2008, launched at Wellcome Collection, attracting widespread acclaim. The collection, co-curated with my daughter, Dora, became a book which won MIND book of the year in 2011.
The image of water was one I used frequently in the drawings, especially during the first years to express anguish and grief – and feeling overwhelmed by responsibility, worry and fear. As I got better birds appeared, sometimes on my head! The final drawing is called The Daily Stream of Consciousness. It sums the happiness I felt when I got better – calm, at peace and full of hope.
Bobby Baker, 2020
All images © Bobby Baker 2009
After Grunewald Crucifixion
Matthias Grunewald painted the Isenheim Altarpiece between 1512-16.
This collage makes use of Grunewald’s crucified Christ figure. Here we see Jesus crucified onto the wings of Boeing 757 airliner. Air travel is known to cause a staggering amount of CO2, the most prevalent greenhouse gas. In my contemporary version of the Grunewald Crucifixion there is just one single mourner at the foot of the cross, you might recognise her, Greta Thunberg, the climate activist.
At this time of the Liturgical year our thought turn to Easter, and that before we can celebrate the Resurrection, we must first find time to mourn the death of our Savour on Good Friday. We should also mourn the loss of the earth’s biodiversity through human action and contemplate our part in this. Through mourning, contemplation and prayer let us start to change our ways and restore our natural place in the harmony of God’s Creation.
© Janek Dubowski 2020
After the Annointing
This began with realising how much your hair can hold a story - woodsmoke, barbecues...
Grief moves in stages and as it does we change our relationship to what reminds us of what we’ve lost; sometimes we have to in order to continue on, to be useful in the world.
© Rhian Roberts 2019
Easter Triptych
Golgotha – Pieta – Awakening
A small photograph in the paper caught my eye. It showed a beautiful, golden-rosy, misty sunrise landscape. Standing proudly atop a promontory in the centre of the image stood a sacred cow. It, too, was bathed in the glorious golden- misty light. Birds wheeled off in the sky above, barely visible. The viewer, a trespasser witnessing a still moment of nature uncontaminated by human contact.
Looking more closely I realised that it was a vast refuse heap. The misty shapes I saw as hillocks and distant trees were mounds of human-created rubbish; the animals, the birds, scavenging amongst the human detritus.
We have contaminated – and continue to contaminate – our beautiful world, colonising the landscape and defiling it as if there were no consequence. Nature has no choice but to bear our throw-away culture. The rubbish tips we have littered the world with have become so much a part of the landscape that we almost don’t notice them. Wildlife and people live in them.
Golgotha, the site of the crucifixion, was a rubbish tip.
I lost the photograph a long time ago, but the image still haunts me. It inspired Golgotha, the first painting in my triptych, and influenced Pieta, the second painting. The third, Awakening, is part of another set of paintings, number XIV of the Stations of the Cross I painted a few years ago. It seemed to belong here, too.
The paintings that form this triptych have been painted on scraps of canvas that I have had for years, never thrown away because I thought I could make use of them one day. The same goes for the oil paints - some of which were my mother’s from when she was an art student in the 1940s.
© Sheena 2020
Both Sides of the Story
"In my vision of climate change both extremes are still possible. I've used the image of a tree for my work as they are the longest living non-clonal organisms on earth. Being the essence of nature it seemed logical to choose this life form to depict the effects climate change could have on our planet.
But there is a glimmer of hope that the catastrophic and irreversible damage that could happen to our world can still be halted. Can you find it in the tree?"
Title: "Both Sides of the Story"
By: Inga Viola Wolf
Created in London (England), Easter 2020
Materials used: Silver-plated Wire, Glass and Plastic Beads, Stone Soap Dish
Altar Table
My inspiration for making the Easter alter table came from the New Zealand artist - Derek Lind. He has created an alter table for a Church in Aukland and when we visited last year and I saw the table, I knew immediately I wanted to paint one like it for St Lukes. I wanted to use 3 different texts, specific to St Lukes, so divided the circle into equal thirds then wrote out the 3 different texts, to be read from whichever side of the table you stand.
The first is Micah 6v8 ‘What does Love require of you, but to do Justice, love Mercy and walk humbly with your God’
I wanted the words of a woman to feature on the table, and Mother Julian of Norwich is so wise and her mystical sayings are rich and timeless. This is the original, which I had to shorten to fit in the space:
“And in this he showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed. And it was as round as any ball. I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding, and thought, ‘What may this be?’ And it was answered generally thus, ‘It is all that is made.’ I marveled how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to nothing for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it. And so have all things their beginning by the love of God.”
The final words are those of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, which were turned into a song and we sing at St Lukes regularly -
Goodness is stronger than evil
Love is stronger than hate
Light is stronger than darkness
Life is stronger than death.
They were written in South Africa at the time of Apartheid, but they are timeless and so appropriate now - giving us strength and hope in the middle of the Covid19 pandemic. When I feel that awful fear about what is going on, I have found comfort in the image of the Light that is stronger than darkness. I read the words of John O’Donohue, from his book Walking in Wonder. He talks about Light and reflects:
‘What is the source of the light that banishes our fear? … One of my images of the divine is that it is light in some form, and that the divine light works very tenderly with human freedom. If you don’t believe that the light is there, you will experience the darkness. But if you believe the light is there, and if you call the light towards you, and if you call it into whatever you’re involved in, the light will never fail you.’
I love that, and I have started calling the light towards me and calling the light towards the people I love and places Im concerned about.
© Meg Wroe 2020
Orangutan
I drew inspiration for my wall hanging when I was thinking about the environmental theme for Lent.
I decided to be a vegan for Lent which was not that hard as I am a vegetarian and I also started looking at environmental images.
I came across Indonesia and incredibly sad images of orangutans walking around their burnt forest, climbing machinery and looking obviously terribly confused and lost.
Indonesia burnt 1.6 million hectares of land last year.
The Indonesian fires have been blamed
for increasing green house emissions and deforestation that can endanger wildlife, like orangutans.
As probably, our closest living relatives, I wanted to draw attention to the orangutans plight and to depict the burnt forest and a lone orangutan and his/her beauty, especially the red, brown and orange hair that I spent so long embroidering, using long and short stitch.
The green shoots are for hope, because even in the devastation of a burnt forest.
life begins again.....and this is for hope for all nature, but especially for the orangutans in Indonesia.
© Barbara Ludlow 2020
Shopping List In A Bottle
Charcoal on paper
55 x 35 cm
© Gerrard Mikelsons
Dedicated to all the vulnerable people self-isolating during these unprecedented frighting times.
The drawing is the creative combination of the story of the miracle of Jesus walking on the water to rescue his frightened disciples, the act of faith and hope of a message in a bottle, and the shopping list of essential items from a vulnerable person self-isolating for their own safety.
Apart For Now
This dance, entitled ‘Apart For Now’, might make you feel something, it might not. If it resonates with how you have been feeling recently, take comfort in being in this common place - a place of proximity. The dance has closeness at its core, with fleeting moments of meticulous attention to detail; these moments can feel weighted with emotion. Take comfort in knowing that distance is temporary and closeness comes in many forms. Notice too, that there are dynamic movements, which suggest a sense of striving towards something more meaningful. Take comfort in knowing that, although we may be apart for now, we are in this moment together.
Choreographed and performed by Millie Holland
Music written, recorded and mixed by Rick Leigh
Filmed and edited by Crispin Holland
A Time to Stop
I knew I wanted to create a piece of sculpture from found objects. Cycling home from work a few days later I found a set of traffic light heads on Turpike Lane that were being replaced and were destined for the dump, I had found my found object but it took a while for them to suggest anything to me, until a WhatsApp conversation with Meg nudged me in a direction. Easter feels like a stop and a start to me with Easter Saturday waiting uncomfortably in a neither here nor there place. It has the potential to be a liminal place, pregnant with potential and transformation. I wove the verse from Ecclesiastes in to images of the traffic light lit up with the Spring sunlight through my window. In the familiar passage, Solomon reflects on strands of life, and the line ‘a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing’ have been given a strange new significance. This lent has been the most unusual I can remember, for the obvious reasons. It was on or about Ash Wednesday that a foreboding realisation crept in that we could be on the cusp of something of global significance we can’t yet understand, but will serve as an indelible watershed in our lives.
There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
2
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
3
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
4
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
5
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
6
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
7
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
8
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace
© Dan Brearley 2020
Interconnectedness
“If you’re holding a sapling in your hand when the Messiah arrives, first plant the sapling and then go out and greet the Messiah.”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory
Power’s book describing the interconnectedness of trees to humanity, and life itself, tells us that no argument can change a person’s mind, only a good story can do that. Bernadette has always loved this tree behind our home, and since reading this book, I am seeing it properly for the first time.
Hopefully, in time to come, when we are all elsewhere, somebody may find my poem and ponder the meaning of its mythical title? And then tell their own version of the story to continue the eternal thread.
© Stefano Cagnoni, Easter 2020
Move
'Move' was captured when a plastic shopping bag melted on to a hob. In order to restore the cooking space, care had to be taken to remove the debris.
We have been invited to restore our environment. Like 'Move', this requires us to first observe the mess we have created. Mess created in carelessness or hurry. At times it may feel that there is ironic beauty in the disruption.
The effort to remove the plastic from the cooking space required different approaches. In an unexpected but urgent circumstance, creativity and dedication are required in each action. Restoration of sacred earth requires us to consider many different tools to equip us in action. Each action is taken up humbly, not knowing what will aid restoration.
We accept that we may not live to see the fruit of our efforts. There is no point of completion in sight. We may not know if when we arrive there. The process might leave scars. Instead, we can be challenged to see opportunity in crisis. To seek beauty in the process itself.
Mamre / מַמְרֵא
2015
Triptych monotype prints on Hahnemuhle paper
1060 x 510mm
© Garry Rutter
These three monotypes were made by manipulating black printing ink on a glass surface. Then transferring the inky image from the glass, using a giant lithograph rubber roller, to fresh glass. The image was transferred several times, using the roller until finally it was moved to a metal printing plate and put through a printing press with Japanese Hahnemuhle paper. This repeated transference blurs and softens the original inky mark making creating an indistinct and enigmatic image.
The title references the site of a grove of great oaks and a bronze age Canaanite shrine, named after a Canaanite tribal chief called Mamre. It was there that Abram met God in the form of three strangers or angels. He killed a calf and offered them hearty hospitality. Christians regard the three strangers as a prefiguring of the Holy Trinity, one God in three persons.
For me this enigmatic triptych takes on even more resonance in these times of the Covid-19 pandemic and of isolation; as we may not offer physical hospitality to one another and the stranger takes on even greater notions of threat.
Tryptich
TRYPTICH FOR EASTER AT THE TIME OF COVID 19.
The original brief was Stations in a time of climate change, so I chose to use recycled materials - . my canvas was carrier bags and I made tools, or brushes, from found objects; branches, nails and a sponge tied to a stick. Then, everything changed. So to reflect our current crisis each piece has been covered with a veil. The mark making is there, but it is obscured and you can’t touch it.
© Hilary Mayo 2020
Father, forgive them…
Moving into a new house earlier this year necessitated a succession of deliveries, all of which seemed to be bound in plastic. One item would have multiple layers of the stuff, which put me in mind of the whole earth being swathed and swamped in this material, which does not degrade over time. Jesus’s words from the cross to the gambling soldiers sprang to my mind (“Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do”, Luke 24) – like the soldiers, are we gambling with our future? But, unlike the soldiers, do we actually have full knowledge of what we are doing but choose to destroy our planet anyway?
I started to collect all the clear plastic that we would have discarded in Lent – what you see here is only a fraction of it.
Look closely at the image, and you will see these words of Jesus, almost totally obscured by layers of plastic.
Father, forgive us.
© Sophie MacKenzie 2020
It Is
Carbon dust on cold press paper
297 x 420 mm
fire consumed
the altered wood
sucking all colour
as dust falls
from my fingers
forming shapes
dust to dust
ashes to ashes
the world is
© Jif Thompson
Untitled
Oil on canvas
One of my process lead paintings where I start with an idea only of the technique and colours I want to start with. It’s only as the piece developes that it’s conclusion becommes apparrant. Using a pallet knife to give texture and weight to the paint I realized it was saying something about the energy and drama of creation perhaps.
© Mike Poole April 2020
Roll Away the Stone
Ink on paper
290 x 200 mm
These prints are from a series of lino cuts, exploring the textures of life. The lines are drafted from my continuous line drawings of surfaces in nature and pattern including lichen on stone.
Whilst working, I was thinking about a position Jesus would take with the natural environment so under threat from the climate emergency. Especially as Jesus lived close to the land and drew the imagery for his parables and stories from the very soil and stones he inhabited.
© Hâf Thompson 2020