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.
