Behold I am doing a new thing

BEHOLD I AM DOING A NEW THING

I had no idea what this would be. The stretched canvas came from Oxford. My MSN messaging name is ‘Red shoes are lovely’ and I have a thing about red shoes. One day I noticed the progression from red boots to red shoes and realised there was a liberating element to the change. Another day, I sketched out a woman coming out of a person shaped cupboard, the woman’s body being more or less clearly seen, the cupboard shaped as voluminous clothes, hiding the human shape. It became an emergence from what was (for so long) to what was beginning to be.

So here it is. The boxes are all sorts of symbols and reality. The painted box in the middle always held vitamins, the boxes on either side, jewellery. All ways of managing. They are open here, as the things they stand for are now.

The title comes from another favourite Bible passage, Isaiah 43.19: “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.”

Darkness is as Light

This painting begins to touch the deeply personal. It is a triptych, the panels created for a commission which never quite happened, but about which I am delighted to have the panels. I had no idea what would be here.

I painted the centre first, catching my shadow against the panel as I stood in my studio which is a conservatory. The left hand panel came next, with the little girl sheltering herself not from the night, but from the darkness heaped upon her. She found her occupations and her source of light.

The right hand panel was the last, evoking the faith message of harvest from grains. Gold glows all around.

The title is from Psalm 139, always my companion: “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me, even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.”

That you may have life

Rainbows are huge for me. I love them because I have to find the dark to see them. Placing my back to the light, pursuing the search in the dark clouds, there they are - all the colours in the universe arching in one (or two) shining bows, reminding the dark that it is only vapour.

I tried so often to paint rainbows, finding twee results. This just catches a moment. The glass mount is just that, glass. See through to whatever, reflecting whatever. The rainbow is the light, the glass almost water.

The title is from the gospel of John, my favourite theologian, who has Jesus say, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly”.

Breathing Light - Wisdom detail

The Stone was rolled away

I woke one morning with this picture on my brain. I could see the vaulted ceiling of a huge cathedral and I could see a small person - minimised and apparently ignored by the immensity of the institution of the church. But as I painted, I couldn’t manage the person in the bottom right hand corner and realised that s/he shouldn’t be there.

Suddenly fabric burst forth with colour and movement and shape. As I watched this grow, it became a statement of my distance from, yet attachment to, the institutional church. The church and its core creeds have told me of love when I wished particular people might have. I have been ordained and upheld by the church, even with my own deep critique of it. I both belong to it and fly out of it.

Wisdom Dove Speaks

This is a combination of Jim Hansford’s shed window frame, Steph’s raw oak outside frame, fine woven cotton and rough canvas, variously tied and streched.

It was painted in 1992 when I was Artist in Residence for the United Reformed Church Forum conference. Themed ‘Roots and Branches’ the conference was planned to look at the roots of the URC; I couldn’t help but go back to the roots of our faith altogether. To me, the right side is rather like the knowledge of God as shared before Jesus Christ and the left, that knowledge as made human in the world. The Spirit (Wisdom Dove) is everywhere.

It is part of these paintings as a statement of that which I have always felt held me and a statement of what I always believed.

As Dying, See we Live

I suspect this may be hard for some, but not for others. For me, it is another painting of reality, but also of beauty. After all I did to remember and to come to a new and liberating place, breast cancer felt a body blow in all the ways that can be interpreted.

I went through it because it was just a different form of all I have been through in the past. But oddly enough, I didn’t feel diminished. I wanted to show through this painting that though bits of us may not be quite what we want them to be, beauty is present. Both the kingfisher fabric and the kingfisher bird in the top left are a colour and a simile attributed to me by others over the years. They seemed right here.