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Painting with colours too elusive for the eye

Jason Carter. Thanks for being an inspiration and playing such a great gig in our front room. Everyone enjoyed the music, the stories, and the vibe. It was great to spend some time catching up with you, and the inevitable run around the garden too.. thanks

Latest Website – St.Marys, Thatcham

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Good to get this one going live..
I’m increasingly impressed with the content management of WordPress.. makes life a lot easier for clients….

Van Doesburg and the International Avant-Garde

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Fantastic exhibition at Tate Modern.. if you get the chance do go and see it….

I put a proposal together for a Church client later based on some of this, (below).. not used in the end…

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Standing in the Long Now

Greenbelt, like a worn and cracked vase that has stood on the shelf for so long that you cannot ever remember it not having been there.. standing in the long now. Through times of joy and tears, pain and hope, it has served, refreshed, enabled inspiration and sometimes decay.. it is a part of who you are.. It contains memories, the laughter of friend, the brightness of special days, and days of mourning…  and if you turn it upside down and read the mark printed into the crazed surface, it simply reads, ‘heavenly’.wash-gb

If i would…

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Love Me (work in progress)

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Loving the website of Maisie Crow – who is getting some recognition right now….

Recent Portraits… Micah

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What’s the point of illustration? To Illustrate suppose

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Book Club Friday night – we read and discussed something a little different this time, Cairo a Graphic Novel by G. Willow Wilson… set in modern Cairo against a backdrop of contemporary political and criminal tension and a pervasive awareness of middle-east folklore. It was a good read, (and re-read), but conversation moved onto what the purpose, or maybe i should say distinction between a novel – which enable freedom of imagination and self-imagary, and this a graphic novel, where the imaginative image conjouring is done for you… At first it seemed we were all thinking that this might limit the imaginative possibilities for the reader, but after a while i was reminded of the excellent place of illlutration in all sorts of context… especially children’s books. In conclusion… “What’s the point of illustration? It’s to Illustrate.”

i dare you productions

HEllo RoRo

I think you are very Cool – your website is cool too….

Silence

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Having been Inspired by the premier performance of his composition on the same novel, James MacMillan has caused me to finally read Silence by Shusaku Endo.

A reluctant and unresolved Japanese Catholic, Endo tells the story of two seventeenth-century missionaries attempting to shore up the oppressed Japanese Christian movement. Father Rodrigues has come to Japan to find the truth behind unthinkable rumours that his famous teacher Ferreira has renounced his faith. But after his arrival he discovers that the only way to help the brutally persecuted Christians may be to apostatize himself.

Following in a similar vain to Graham Greene’s stunning ’Power and Glory’, this novel is a profound and moving meditation on the Silence of G-d in the face of extreme persecution. It explores the deeper motivations of self-preservation, faith, martyrdom and sacrifice. It raises questions about the motivations of priesthood and challenges squarely the nature of G-d, unearthing the divine as far more mysterious, intriguing, and beguiling than any comforted western mind could comprehend.

This novel, although not trying to ‘do theology’ inevitably reveals the challenges of living out faith in a distinctly different culture, and how the whole notion of faith expression are resolved. To use Endo’s repeated analogy – how does the Sapling of a Hellenistic Christianity survive in the swamp of Japan, with a totally different worldview?

This is a particularly pertinent question, (although obviously different context), for the emerging church. It ultimately asks the same questions about the evolution, or re-storying, of faith for a new cultural milieu.

Intriguingly too, (following a bit of historical research), I was fascinated by the true story of this brutally oppressed church in Japan. And how, after centuries of being underground, many small pockets of ‘Kakure Kirishitan’, (HiddenChristians), finally emerged with a faith far different from an orthodox understanding. They still practice a hidden religion where all symbol and ritual is disguised, and where liturgies now contain a mix of Latin, Portugese, Japanese and made-up words that no-one understands. The faith represents a syncretism of Christian, Buddhist, Shinto and Animist thinking. It’s a poignant and moving situation to think that the desire to retain a faith of integrity in the midst of such persecution has caused the emergence of something quite different from where it began.

It’s an excellent book – unflinching and honest… and it’s uniquely ‘other’ perspective on a weakened and broken Christ is challenging, humbling and profound.