I'm delighted to share with you that Witness is now fixed in its new home, St Mary's Chapel in the Open Space Trust in Aberdeen. It has taken some while for the building development, as all developments go, and it is a real treat to see this gift from Aberdeen United Reformed Church have such a glorious place. It should help spread good news to visitors from near and far.
Painting -- not in oils!
Well here we are. Well, here I am, captured by my photographer man whilst reviving an ancient love of mine. Pete has decided to take up his photography again and I’m thrilled. He’s amazing. I decided that to help him by not waiting impatiently for him to take the photo, for heaven’s sake, I needed to do something of my own when out on our image seeking. Watercolor. It’s hard to say how excited I am. Whilst the world turns and feels to sway from one catastrophe to another, I can breathe and renew. I found a fabulous Windsor and Newton Field Set of 14 ½ size paint pots in a small case laid out with room to mix paints and space to put some water. I got heavy watercolor paper in a pad glued at the edges so that when I wet the paper to start painting, the paper doesn’t wrinkle or shrink back at the sides. This means that I don’t have to prep before I go out (masking taping the paper to a drawing board first). All I need is my usual water bottle, my pad, my box of paint and the fabulous brush that came with the kit. I can go anywhere. This sounds a little duh, but you have to understand the time it takes to set up for oil painting and to clean up afterwards to appreciate the contrast. I need an hour each studio session just to open and close any painting moments I have. Now, I can sit down, take five minutes each side and hey presto, I’m painting. Delighted I am. Delighted.
In the pic, I’m sitting on a car rug on a log being kept company by a few ants and sheltered by the Eucalypts. The oil filled air is heaven to breathe and deeply restful. I rekindled my watery skies, layers of light to dark, transparent v opaque. The formal rule of watercolor painting is to never add white, but to leave the paper as the white. It’s a wonderful discipline to paint shadows not shapes and to let the objects emerge. My newsletter will have more pictures of the set up and a hint of the emerging woodland 😊
Happy E. Just saying.
Fitting all the pieces in
I knew I had writing my biweekly blog post on my list for today. I procrastinated. I’d just had a conversation with my husband and creative partner about which part of which days were each of us using our shared studio and workshop, which days either of us was at each of our individual desks for photography work (him) or writing/worship planning (me) or researching (him) or drawing (me) or crafting (both) or not… Resting? Wandering? Time with family? Friends? Time to de-stress and strategize about the international news?
We’d had a wonderful creative conversation last Friday at dinner when we planned amazing new artwork for us both. At this point in our day, this week, Friday last week seemed like eons ago and I could hardly recall. I had to plan. Most of you know that planning is as much in my nature as painting. I had to know how it all and how we fit. We’ve been spending over a year finding out how we fit in a new culture, new bureaucracy, family patterns, church routines and gym schedules. But we hadn’t really sorted how we fit with each other’s aspirations and focus and how we fit in those jigsaw pieces with everything else. I made a weekly plan! It has a big winking face at the top, letting in the reality of every day’s likelihood of having something unexpected, but we have a default! It at least lets us know the first steps in the morning, so we’re both pleased. His grin was a thing to behold.
This little jigsaw came out of work I did to illustrate an online learning program on a faith filled life. Its final version has a group of people walking on it trying to see where they fit (!).
The in-between time
For many Christians across the planet we are moving inside Holy Week. We worshipped at Palm Sunday last week, tomorrow we remember in Maundy Thursday, Holy Week Friday tradition asks us to call it Good, we wait in Holy Saturday and arrive at Easter. I can’t stop and tell you what all of these dwelling places in Holy Week mean because each one is fraught with religious and political re-interpretation though the history of this much layered faith. Instead, I give you this painting, done 35 years ago (!). It is called Holy Saturday.
It began life as a piece of stretched sheeting on an old picture frame. It’s back depicts military personnel wearily walking and was created for a Churches Together reflection service on Remembrance Day in a suburban Oxford shopping centre. After then, I was having a deep conversation with a hymn writer friend. He told me kindly yet in no uncertain terms, that I wasn’t painting because I could. Essentially, I was taking my talent and skill for granted. I almost whined - “I don’t know what to paint!”. He gently replied to paint what I was angry at. This painting is the first painting I ever did where I painted what was in my head, not in a landscape, still life or of a person in front of me. I’ve not painted other than this inspirational way since.
Here she is, hand, out-stretched and touching a rainbow of fabric. She’s tight in some kind of agony, but her hand could not be painted closed in to the body, no matter how much I tried. The sheer process of trying to close it in while it tried to reach the light was hard work indeed. So I gave up and let it do what it wanted - touch the rainbow.
The name indicates the time between the death and resurrection of Jesus on the Holy Saturday we will remember and live in this week. Death is known and life is not quite there yet, but there is a hint somewhere. This is my version of that in-between time.
I give it to you now, because the in-between time is what we know best. We see living hell around our planet, much of it human caused by greed and arrogance. We know that peaceful human companionship is a passion for many of us. We are in-between. Please let this woman’s compulsion to touch rainbows help you to stretch out to your light.
My Sister, our Death
A very long time ago, I saw a newspaper article and its associated photograph. I couldn’t breathe as I took in the anger, sorrow, injustice, rage and grief. I always am angry with myself for not finding the photographer. Carefully, I forgive myself that I followed copyright law in my use of their image (I only copied parts of it…). The parts of it spoke. Sometimes to blog with you, I simply open my files and wait for something to declare itself. Today, this is it. I called it My sister, Our Death.
I think of my birth country and all the sick racism. I see my last home country and its grinding racism. I see my new home coutry and read more and listen to its horrendous racism. I think of different countries with family members and friends raging at the injustice happening to them at the expense of someone else’s random power. Horribly, we can pick any year of existence somewhere on our planet and find such abuse of power and its ensuing rage and grief.
It must stop. What I did those years ago was read the article, stare at the image, get close to these people by drawing them in a new place on new paper in a home they never knew and dwell with them. The more we can truly see, get energy to engage with someone else’s truth and relay their truth as honestly as we can, the injustice will stop. It will. Eventually. Because more and more of us are speaking and doing. Over the last few years, we’ve seen hell on earth. We’ve also seen people who never in their lives would have risen up to react now by truth telling their rage - as they carry and care for their neighbours. I urge you to rage and love as hard as you can. Deep peace be with you and give you energy.
Two signatures!!
I blog on a Thursday today, not a Wednesday…. there were things to do! The summer has finally arrived in time for Autumn, and I’ve been out in the studio on my Thursdays creative day. As I used to carve out studio days of old, life has settled well enough now for me to carve out a Thursday, the day I always used for creative things during my pastoral ministry. The first few years of ministry, the Thursdays were chaplaincy at Oxford Brookes Uni. The second set of four years or so was the growth of Oxenford, my women’s clerical clothing company. The final set of years before I moved to wider ministry was the development of the Oxford Healthy Living Centre. Wider ministry and moving onto our dear boat meant no studio for a few years. Then, when we settled into a less travelled boat life, I found my Braunston studio, dedicated what time I could for art then moved my office there too. It helped me paint as and when for over ten years turning out commissions for painting and illustrations and the occasional new work. I loved it, but it was too easy for the desk work of ministry to reduce the art time. Now I have my one day a week absolutely dedicated to the creating and do the desk bit of it on other days. It’s fabulous.
Below are bits of two new paintings. Faith, the very colourful one I’m caught signing lays tribute to the three wisdom sources for our faith - the Cosmos, scriptures and our Soul. The single photo below Faith’s two is Symbiosis. It challenges the ideas that black is bad and light is good (do look up the dictionary definitions for both words). Here, dark, light and all colours containing both work together and are utterly necessary to each other. Symbiotically, they all need each other to be seen. I’ll write more for each and give a good photos when they get their web pages.
The cycle begins again...
What a week. Yesterday was the start of Ramadan, the Chinese New Year and Shrove Tuesday (Mardi Gras). Today is Ash Wednesday and so Lent begins. Though the Christian preparation and festival annual cycle touches me most deeply of this list, I find that according to Chinese astrology, I was born in the year of this new cycle – the year of the Horse. That makes me confident, agreeable, and responsible, although I also tend to dislike being reined in by others. Apparently I’m fit and intelligent, adoring physical and mental exertion; I’m decisive but also easily swayed and impatient. We’ll all have different opinions as to whether that is true for me. 😊 That we have these cycle points to remind us to review and renew is important. They’re a call to stop. Breathe. Pay Attention. Whatever spiritual tradition we find for our home, the cycle points call us to see others more dearly, to see ourselves more lovingly, to help our communities in whatever way makes sense. They’re a call to be part of something larger than ourselves and that, to me, is only a good thing. In this stopping cycle point of 2026, may you find energy to reflect and renew.
For these multiple views of the same moment, I’ve chosen the image below from Living Water, my Artist in Residence painting for the URC General Assembly 2012. In this section, after hearing report after report, I saw churches in all shapes and sizes, and in odd relationship to each other. A comment in discussion gave the image of the Holy Spirit locked in a cage.
I saw images of churches firmly planted in the midst of the world, so buildings began to rise behind the churches. As I painted the buildings I reflected that it is easy to see corporate buildings as images of evil; yet those buildings are inhabited by vulnerable human beings, some of them as enslaved as the Hebrews of old. So the buildings had to be green, indicating that there was rich ground for transformation.
The Mission Report told some hard stories of the world in which we do mission and the hard realities of so many people’s lives. The bottom right corner of this land of churches in the world became dark with brown and purple boxes which I thought were other sorts of buildings, some visited by saints and spirit filled people. Yet the buildings turned to water and I saw the murky waters in which people feel drowned. As I turned those buildings into murky water, I realised that there needed to be water over the remaining panel, able to indicate that some people and churches can feel all ‘at sea’
I give it to you as an image of truth and hope.
