Viewing all items in Resource Category: God in the Arts

Each year as we look at Creation we see the cycle of the seasons. The earth comes alive in spring, blossoms and bears fruit in summer, gives up its goodness and glory in autumn, and seems to die in the sleep of cold winter. Each of those seasons has its moods and feelings, which we...

In the 17th century the name Arcadia evoked an earthly paradise that was celebrated in art and literature as an idyllic place of peace and harmony where humanity and nature were at one. To live in such beautiful surroundings was to find heaven on earth. We often have that feeling when we are out in...

Each month we are exploring a painting that celebrates the glory and wonder of creation. In this month of March the world around us is moving from the cold and harshness of winter to new birth as the earth comes to life again in the season of spring. It is the theme of ‘Primavera’ by...

Editor:  The copyright on this picture is now in the ‘Fair Use’ domain at Wikiart.org. If you use the graphic, please add the following credit: https://www.wikiart.org/en/stanley-spencer/christ-in-the-wilderness-the-scorpion  ** ** At the end of this month we enter the season of Lent: those 40 days when we follow Jesus into the wilderness and prepare ourselves to celebrate His...

Amid the hectic, busy lives we lead, many people fall under the control of ‘the hurry syndrome.’ We have to do ‘A’ as soon as possible, and we have get to ‘B’ as soon as possible. And along the way, we have phone calls to make, emails to open, and Facebook and Twitter and all...

This month’s drawing is ‘The Virgin and Child’ by Raphael (1483-1520). Raphael was a talented artist from a very early age, but this drawing belongs to a time when he was in Rome from 1510-12. The finished painting is known as the Mackintosh Madonna, after its last owner. This drawing, or cartoon, was the first...

There is a character in a Russian novel who says, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, let us assume that man is not stupid…but if he isn’t stupid, he is monstrously ungrateful all the same – a creature that has two legs and no sense of gratitude.’ That is certainly true in a world where carping and criticising...

“The artist should not only paint what he sees before him, but also what he sees within him.” These are the words of a German romantic painter, Caspar David Friedrich, who lived from 1774-1840. The inspiration for most of his paintings was the countryside and the world of nature around. As he looked at its...

Have you ever read a book by Robin Meyers, ‘Morning Sun on a White Piano’?  It is subtitled ‘simple pleasures and the sacramental life.’ Its theme is that we can easily pass life by, as we search for it. We shun the ‘ordinary’ and the simple in pursuit of more worthwhile endeavours because we equate...

TQ – Tingle Quotient – is the name given to those things that can produce a tingle down the spine or a frisson of excitement. It could be a piece of music or the sight of an evening sunset at sea or a newborn babe. We look, we hear, and what we look at or...

At this time of the year we are planning and looking forward to holidays: to that welcome break away from the pressures and responsibilities of daily life and work. The book of Genesis opens with a glorious account of God’s work of creation and tells us that even God rested on the 7th day. We...

In 563 an Irish monk was forced to leave his homeland because of a conflict that had led to a misuse of power and even bloodshed. On Pentecost Sunday he arrived on the island of Iona off the north-west coast of Scotland with twelve companions. There he began a new way of life, founded on...